


Steele Searching

by SuzySteele



Series: Becoming Remington [1]
Category: Remington Steele (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2019-07-28 09:45:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 44,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16239086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuzySteele/pseuds/SuzySteele
Summary: A sequel to "Steele of Approval" and "Steele Searching". Why were Laura and Remington working at cross-purposes during Approval? What did Steele do after he departed L.A.? How did Laura find him? And how could they possibly reconcile after all the misunderstandings between them? Here's a possible resolution for those gaps.





	1. Part 1 – Steele in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Approval is pretty much a mess in terms of characterization. And what happened between the end of Approval and the beginning of Searching? Both Laura and Remington have a long road to travel before they arrive at their ending. Here's a possible journey. A note to readers that Ch.8 may be familiar; a truncated version originally appeared at Nancy Eddy's fine website, "Casebook of Mr. and Mrs. Steele". Then the scene took on a life of its own, and spiraled out of control and now here it is, 35,000 words later. 
> 
> "Steele Searching" is the first story in my "Becoming Remington" series. It starts at the connection between the end of Season 3 and Beginning of Season 4, and continues through S4 and S5 and beyond. The second story in this series is "Prancer, Dancer, Wally, and Steele" and can be found at Fanfic.com. I'll probably repost it here for consistency. Searching has 18 chapters that are told in two parts, "Steele in the Dark" and "Still Steele". This story is complete, and please check back regularly as I will post a new chapter once or twice a week.
> 
> I invite your feedback in the comments - writers live for feedback!

**Los Angeles**

It was just past six p.m. on a Friday, and Laura Holt epitomized the smartly dressed business professional in her crisp linen skirt-and-suit ensemble, as she exited the elevator on the fifth floor of the Rossmore apartments and followed the grey carpeted hallway to its far end and the door labeled “A” in art-deco silver-lettering. It was the same familiar route she’d traveled many times over the past three years, although now with an important and unfamiliar difference. Door key in one hand and juggling the grocery bag cradled in her arm, she heard a door snick open behind her just as she inserted the key.

“Miss Holt? I thought I heard you come up.”

It was the silver-haired Mrs. Kaminski who lived up the hallway in apartment 5C. Mr. Steele attracted elderly women the way little boys attracted puppies. The woman, a widower, was dressed in what was euphemistically called a ‘housecoat’ and slippers, the same attire she always wore whenever Laura encountered her, and in a rainbow of colors that rivaled Steele’s wardrobe.

“It’s nice to see you again, Mrs. Kaminski,” said Laura with a smile that didn’t travel past her face.

“I heard the door and thought I’d take a moment to just ask,” Mrs. Kaminski explained, a little anxious. “Any word on when Mr. Steele might be returning from his travels?”

“The work’s keeping him very busy,” Laura said in her best reassuring manner. It was the same reply she gave Mrs. Kaminski every week. “He tells us he’s making very good progress.”

The older woman nodded knowingly. “It must be a very difficult case. No doubt filled with subterfuge and master criminals and devious femme fatales." She winked knowingly. "Just like in those movies he loves.”

“No doubt, Mrs. Kaminski,” Laura agreed. At the mention of movies, the false smile froze on her lips.

“Well, when next you speak with him, please tell him we miss him dreadfully. Our little neighborhood just isn’t the same without him. Not quite as cheerful.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him. And I’m sure he misses you as well.”

Mrs. Kaminski nodded at the paper grocery bag held in Laura’s arm. “I thought maybe you were getting things ready for his return?”

“What?” She glanced down with confusion at her package. “Oh. No. Nothing like that. I’m just here to do a little dusting and cleaning. You know. Keep it looking nice for his return.”

“You’re very devoted to him, Miss Holt. Spending your Fridays like this. And you such an attractive young lady. I hope he appreciates you sufficiently when he returns.”

At that, the ghost of a smile flitted across Laura’s features. “So do I, Mrs. Kaminski.”

“Well, I won’t keep you. Good night, dear.”

“Good night, Mrs. Kaminski.”

Laura turned the key and in moments had the door safely closed behind her. She relocked it and inhaled deeply, eyes closed. She could still smell his unique scent, a mix of Karl Lagerfeld aftershave, sandalwood, the slightest hint of cigar, and something indefinably masculine. But it was fainter. He was slipping away from her and the realization brought fresh grief to her heart. Blinking hard, she proceeded to the kitchen and set her bag onto the counter.

The conversation with Mrs. Kaminski was their weekly ritual, ever since that terrible night weeks and weeks ago when she’d returned to Steele’s apartment to find it abandoned. After those first numbing moments when her mind couldn’t process the empty closets and drawers stripped of his personality, she picked up his phone and called Fred. Loyal, omnipotent Fred.

_“No, Miss Holt. He isn’t here. I thought you knew.”_

_“Knew what, Fred? Where is he?” Her heart was still thudding in her chest, so loud that surely Fred could hear it._

_“Urgent flight out of LAX? I delivered him maybe two hours ago.”_

_Had I passed him in the airport?_

_“Did he say where he was going?”_

_“Not to me. I assumed you knew because of the package.”_

_“What package?” She tried to stuff down her frustration. Does everyone know what’s going on except me?_

_“He had me stop at the mailboxes outside the central post office. He mailed something to you.”_

It couldn’t be the keys to the Auburn and apartment; she’d found those in the top drawer of his bureau. The next day’s post revealed it was the agency’s restored license. One of the many things she stupidly hadn’t focused on during the bizarre twists and temptations of the Westfield case. Somehow, Steele had gotten it back for her. The parting gift that said he still believed in her. _Believed in me, even though I drove him away. Did everything short of shoving him out the door. I stupidly assumed he was responsible for losing the license. Instead, he pulled strings I didn’t even know he had, and brought it back to me. He got the signed confession from Prince admitting he and Kendall hired my shooter. He risked his life and reputation for me._

_While I sat on a plane and contemplated a fling with William. Her cheeks burned with fresh shame. Why am I such a good detective until it comes to you? Why can’t I see everything you do for me? You went on your own and got my license back. Did all that legwork on the hitman without my asking._

_Why can’t I get a lead on how you really feel about me?_

So now, here she was, as she was every Friday evening since he’d left. It was the same place she visited on most Friday evenings before he left.

She set about her ritual, because ritual kept you from thinking about reality. Turned on the oven, unboxed a frozen dinner from her grocery bag and set it inside to reheat.

But ritual didn’t protect you from your memories.

_She was about to cancel their dinner date and she felt apprehensive and guilty as she rang the buzzer at his apartment door, so much so that at first she didn’t notice that Remington Steele had his sleeves rolled up and wore something odd over his open collar shirt. Guilty enough that she didn’t notice how enticing he looked with his collar open and arms bared. “About that dinner –” she began immediately as she entered, and then a wonderful aroma pulled her short. An odor that sent her stomach rumbling. She frowned. “What’s that smell?”_

_“Smell? My new aftershave, perhaps.” He took her arm and steered her back toward the door. “Now I’m sure whatever’s on your mind can wait a few hours –”_

_It wasn't aftershave and she wasn’t a detective for nothing, and she easily wiggled free his clasp and made a bee-line for the kitchen. “It seems to be coming from in here.”_

_“Now, Laura, I’m sure to admit responsibility for whatever reprehensible thing I’ve done provided we can do it over dinner.” He was talking a mile a minute, which meant he was trying to cover up something that he didn’t want her to know about. Which meant that she needed to investigate._

_“Could this sudden urge to repent have anything to do with the fact that your aftershave’s burning?”_

_“Oh, no—” He disappeared in a blur so fast it created a breeze. She followed his wake into the kitchen, and her eyes widened in astonishment as she watched him snatch a steaming Le Cruset saucepan from the chic tabletop range._

_“You’re cooking!” Only now did it register that Mr. Steele wore an apron over his open shirt._

_He peered mournfully into the pot’s darkened contents. “So much for the element of surprise.”_

Dinner underway, she pulled cleaning supplies from beneath the kitchen sink. She ran a dust rag over the furniture. Over the elegant, glass-topped dining table and chairs that sparkled beneath the art deco chandelier.

_“I’m not even going to ask what you think you’re doing,” she fumed as she followed him into the dining room, exasperated that once again he hadn’t listened to her and instead set off on a disastrous course of his own. For impenetrable reasons, the dining table was elegantly set for six and light from the chandelier flashed off the crystal stemware and bone china place settings._

_“I know precisely what I’m doing,” he retorted. “William Powell did exactly the same thing in ‘The Thin Man’. Invited all the suspects to a dinner party, reconstructed the crime and exposed the murderer.” And then he smiled at her, using the special charm that always managed to circumvent the anger and annoyance that she used as a shield against him. “And I must say, you make a splendid Myrna Loy.”_

…She flicked the modicum of dust from the coffee table, the end tables and lamps…

_He was dressed in cat burglar-black turtleneck and trousers and lounged on his sofa with a look in his eye that she seldom saw. A look that held passion and arousal and it was how she imagined he would look at her after the first time they’d made love. Except his gaze was directed not at her, but at the painted canvas that they had hauled upstairs and now stood propped against his entertainment cabinet. “It’s the Bordeaux Panel,” he said in awe, and from the soft caress in his voice he even sounded like a lover. “I feel as if I’m finally holding a woman I’ve been after all of my life.”_

_She thought, ‘Well, there’s a cue if ever I’ve heard one’, and with a reckless boldness that felt like a fan dance, she sashayed toward him, propelled maybe by his arousal or perhaps the champagne or even the first thrill of lifting a masterpiece. “How would you like to hold another woman you’ve been after?”_

_“And they say that crime doesn’t pay,” he quipped and pulled her into his arms._

…dusted the empty shelves of the black lacquered entertainment cabinet that once held rows and rows of movie videotapes. Boxes of romanticized dreams for a young man who had very little else at the time…

_“You know Veronica Kirk?” she asked, flummoxed, but the question was ridiculous because the answer was obvious from the silly grin writ large across his otherwise handsome features._

_“Veronica Kirk was the Queen of the B’s!” he’d declaimed with a melodramatic gesture and the genuine, uninhibited glee of a fanboy._

_But Laura still wasn’t following, still didn’t understand how this relative stranger to LA recognized their client’s mother. She ran a hand through her hair. “Bees? As in buzz-buzz?”_

_“B movies!” he cried with another extravagant gesture. Of course. It had to be movies. “The second bill on a double feature. They made them on a shoestring. No budgets, no stars. Just good acting, great scenarios and a plethora of inventiveness.”_

A plethora of inventiveness, Laura thought and an unwanted prickle stung her eyes. Sounds like someone I know. It set her heart aching again.

Dusting complete, she pulled out the vacuum she stored in the front closet and ran it over the grey Berber carpets. The kitchen stove’s timer chimed a friendly ting, and using a pot holder she’d also left in an otherwise empty drawer, she removed the reheated dinner from the oven. Poured herself a glass of white wine from the mini bottle that she’d stashed in the grocery bag. She carried both back to the living room, set the meal on the coffee table and turned on the television. She’d checked the newspaper listings earlier that day, when she thought Mildred wasn’t looking. Neither had the heart to cancel his newspaper subscription. _Million Dollar Movie_ was featuring _North by Northwest_.

_Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. 1955._

She ate her Chef Gaston boeuf Bourguignonne with noodles and watched as Cary telephoned his mother, sat through a murderous art auction, was chased by a plane through a cornfield, and flirted madly with Eva Marie Saint. She wondered if she would ever have the opportunity to flirt with him again and let herself be persuaded by those dazzling blue eyes. Cary and Eva were so cool and calm as their passion unfurled about them. How did they manage it, when love was really confusion and argument and saying words that you didn’t mean and then couldn’t take back? Relationships didn’t wrap up neatly in a hundred minutes and you almost never lived happily ever after. Even when you successfully arrested James Mason with Leo G. Carroll’s help.

She awoke sometime later on the sofa, cramped and stiff, with snow and static on the TV screen. She switched off the set and the lights and headed into the bedroom, where she stripped and then crawled into his bed, burying herself in the sheets and his smell and letting herself pretend that she would awaken the following morning to find him sleeping beside her and wrapped in his warm embrace.

But in the morning, of course, there was no embrace and his side of the bed was always cold.

***  
To be continued...  
[Flashback dialogue from “Tempered Steele”, “A Good Night’s Steele”, “A Steele at Any Price”, and “Steeling the Show”; no copyright infringement intended.]


	2. Part 1 – Steele in the Dark

**Thirty-five thousand feet over the Pacific…**

 He stared out the window from his first class seat and brooded over four thousand miles of empty ocean as their last conversation echoed and reechoed in his memory. He and Laura had wrapped up the case – separately – and returned to his apartment, having unmasked the backstabbing duplicity of the kingmakers Kendall and Erhart. He had just served them both tea and resumed his seat on the sofa, relaxed and pleased at how the case had turned out, all things considered. It would be trivial to get the agency’s license returned, Laura was safe and back with him, and they had uncharted time ahead to consider the possibilities. It baffled him why they had been at odds during this case, and he was relieved when she accepted his offer to return to his apartment ‘and plan things out’, as she had phrased it. She accepted the tea and after a first sip set it down on the coffee table and resumed her pacing from sofa to fireplace and back. She often paced when she was puzzling out a solution. He sat back and watched her with a not-quite smug expression. He knew what troubled her, and more importantly, he knew how to restore her spirits.

 His assumption on this matter had been his first mistake.

  _“I think it’s safe to say we should have no trouble getting the license returned,” he had said to reassure her. He knew how important the agency’s detective license was to Laura Holt. It was her identity and her lifeline and it was what he liked to think was the McGuffin that first bonded them together._

_She paused then and met his gaze. Her own was pensive. “Not having it has given me time to think.”_

_This was exactly what he hoped for. Laura thinking about the two of them. He missed their partnership during these past few days, and her absence from his side had felt like a physical amputation. He was very glad they were back together. (Later, he recriminated himself. ‘You fool. You should know it’s never a good thing when Laura thinks about our relationship.’)_

_“About what?” he had asked, stupid enough to assume that Laura had already reached the same conclusion as he. No case meant they would have unlimited time together. Time to explore each other and how they felt. Opportunities to kiss without being shot at. No Mildred to interrupt. No dangling investigational threads to distract Laura._

_He couldn’t have been more wrong._

_Instead, she hugged herself tighter, as if to ward against some fast-approaching danger, and her thoughts couldn’t have been more distant from his. “Is that piece of paper the only thing keeping us together? Do we really have anything else in common besides the agency?”_

_He frowned, not quite sure he heard her correctly. Was she really back on this again? Doubting herself and the two of them? The doubt reminded him that he owed her a belated apology. “Laura, if this is about my allergy to legwork—” He still berated himself for not paying attention at the outset of the case. He should have focused on the details instead of nodding off while she reviewed the client visit he’d missed. Maybe it would have gone so differently if he had done._

_Her gesture of denial interrupted him. “No, no, it’s got nothing to do with that,” which puzzled him for a moment. If this wasn’t about his negligence – and he had been at fault, at the beginning – then what was troubling Laura?_

_And then he saw it. He was good at reading body language – a man in his former line of business had to be – and he had memorized Laura’s. This was the language last seen in that never-to-be-forgotten evening at their last day at Cannes last September. While fireworks exclaimed romance across the harbor, on the balcony Laura had pushed him away. Now he saw the same reserve, the tell-tale inability to meet his gaze, and the worry that furrowed her brow. He found himself holding his breath, and unease began to gnaw at his insides._

_She paused now and pivoted to confront him. “Don’t you see?” she asked him, but he didn’t. “Losing that license may be the best thing that ever happened to us. Maybe it’ll give us time to think about how we feel towards each other outside of work. All we’ve done is play trial and error with our personal relationship as we try to squeeze it into our professional one.”_

_And now he saw it. This wasn’t about dozing or legwork. This was Laura the Fearful. Once again terrified because they had resolved the case. No gunshots or dead bodies to hide behind. Losing their license had removed the single greatest excuse that she used to keep her feelings at bay. The convenient excuses Laura used time and again to ignore his attentions had all disappeared. It was Acapulco and Cannes and Malta redux, and in her mind, San Francisco and Vegas never happened._

Now, as he stared out the window at the black, starlit sky and the twinkling reflections of those pinpoints on the empty ocean below, he realized that what he should have said to her then was, “I agree. We’ve never had the time.” He should have said, “Let’s find out. Come with me. Fiji or Aspen or Hawaii or even San Francisco.” He should have said, “I need you. I can’t imagine being without you.”

He should have said, “I already know how I feel about you. About us.”

_Instead, his tongue froze and his brain went blank. How could she doubt? How could she stand there and question where they stood after confessing that she needed him? After admitting that San Francisco was the most romantic thing that ever happened to her? After nearly going with him to Aspen? He thought they’d moved well past those old fears and had left behind the detritus that was Cannes. She still couldn’t see how he felt about her and he didn’t know how to make her see it. He couldn’t believe that she remained blind and deaf to what she meant to him. His heart began to pound and yet, somehow, the hand that held his cup and saucer remained rock steady. He knew what she would say next. He could see the train wreck coming and he was powerless to stop it._

_Somehow he managed to speak and he sounded ridiculously calm. He felt as though he was watching himself. “Are you saying it hasn’t worked?”_

_“Are you saying it has?” she countered, and with those words, he understood that she believed them to be true. That she couldn’t trust him with her heart or with her agency.  It was a knife to the gut, and only now did he realize he’d been gravely wounded._

_Her denial stunned him, but somehow he managed to give her the grace of being honest. She so prized honesty. “Perhaps not consistently, but—”_

_And then the mortal blow._

_“All I’m suggesting is that we take some time and think about it for awhile. That’s all.”_

_Take some time to think about it…Think about it…Think about it…_

Well, he was finished with thinking about it. All they’d been through together and she was still terrified of commitment. How many more times could he put up with her running away from her feelings? How could she not see what was so obvious in her heart? He already knew how he felt about their relationship and how much he wanted her. So did Laura, if she’d admit it. Dammit, it wasn’t about thinking! It was about feeling! And if she didn’t know her feelings by now, then nothing he could say would persuade her. The time for thinking was long past. It was time to explore and see how they would be when no one distracted them.

What made it all the more galling was that he’d stayed at her side for three years now. The longest he’d ever stayed anywhere in his life. She knew that. He told her that more than once. He abided by her stupid rule and kept it professional these past months to demonstrate his respect for her. He stayed beside her even when their relationship was purely professional. How on earth could she doubt what he felt for her? What she meant to him? He wasn’t nimble with words that were unfamiliar to his tongue, but his actions had shown her time and again. She knew. She had to know.

And if she doubted? Good God! He’d worked for her and taken blows for her and kept her safe and surrendered his past to her and, well, maybe even loved her? (He wasn’t sure if it was love yet. He didn’t know what love was, not really.)

Well. He was finished with that. He was tired of being kicked to the curb.

All that had flashed through him during those numbed moments when she dropped the curtains back down between them. After a few desultory attempts at conversation while both their teas grew cold, she left with a mumbled apology about needing to check on somebody. He walked her to the door, god help him, always the gentleman, and then stood in place for an eternity while his hands clenched and unclenched and the movie posters on the opposite wall blurred and his pleasant, art deco apartment darkened as dusk began to fall. He couldn’t see the view of the skyline or even his life. _Is that piece of paper the only thing keeping us together?_

_Are you saying it hasn’t worked?_

_Well, you’re right. Apparently it hasn’t._ And so he placed a quick call to Monroe Henderson and kicked himself out first, before she had the opportunity.

But first, he got her license back and mailed it to her. Just to show her that it could be done. Because it was the most important thing in the world to her.

Maybe because he loved her.

His flight out of LAX was direct to Sydney, which gave him plenty of time to fume and snarl in his first class seat. Because years ago he promised himself that he’d never do anything less than first class again. He was careful, of course, to keep his dark mood concealed from the flight attendants, and Richard Blaine was his usual suave and charming self. The ladies refilled his complementary mimosa at breakfast and his chilled Riesling at lunch, and he exchanged with them an occasionally _bon mot_ that he knew would raise a smile with the attractive women who served on the trans-Pacific flight. When they paused at Tahiti to refuel, he gazed out the window at the azure seas and the endless procession of white-flecked waves that rolled onto the shore, and he imagined Laura in a crimson sarong with a white orchid in her hair, standing on the silver beach as the warm waves teased around her bare feet, and he told himself how stupid he had been to believe that his fantasy had even the remotest chance of coming true.

_She held you off for three bloody years. If she really wanted that close relationship with you, she’d have slept with you by now. She would have fallen for seductive words whispered in her ear and the brush of your hand across her breast. She’s nothing but a cocktease and it’s time you admitted it to yourself._

In Sydney, he telephoned Daniel because he needed a sympathetic ear to listen to his rant, and he knew Daniel would certainly offer that against Linda/Lisa/Laura.

“Finished? I’m glad to hear it, my boy,” rang the cheerful voice over the line. “Linda was never a good fit for you. No more than that Anna ever was.”

“Don’t bring Anna into it” he had snarled. “There isn’t even a comparison.”

He decided he needed a focus for his anger, and he channeled that anger into a profitable week at the Sydney gaming tables where he took no prisoners and refilled his financial coffers. He also spied a familiar face at the casino and despite the irony or perhaps because of it, he developed a reasonably satisfactory plan to keep himself preoccupied. The Australian Freddie Smith had an expensive condo overlooking the harbor and it held a small painting by Perugino that Steele thought was ugly. But the loathsome portrait actually belonged to a museum in Tokyo, and that meant it had a finders’ fee attached, which conferred the extra attraction of screwing over Smith twice again. Development of the plans to liberate the Perugino took two weeks because, thanks to Cannes, the neural material that passed for Freddie’s soused mind was now dimly aware that his pretty things could be stolen. Arranging the painting’s safe transfer to Tokyo took another several days, and that kept his mind sufficiently focused on the task at hand instead of a beautiful woman left behind in Los Angeles, and he made a nice packet on the finder’s fee. Funny how he always seemed to collect the finder’s fee when Laura wasn’t around.

It would have been just like the old days, except that Freddie Smith reminded him of Laura and it just wasn’t the same without having her at his side to accompany his moves in a seamless unison, all the while criticizing his moves, and doing both at the same time.

He pretended that he felt like his old self again after successfully liberating the painting. _Richard Blaine is back in town!_

It was at the Sydney gaming tables that he noticed the woman who wore her auburn hair pinned up to accent a slender neck and the slim bodice of her strapless gown. His heart had stopped briefly at first notice. There were freckles – this was Australia – but of course it wasn’t her. He exchanged a glance or two to gauge her interest, and by the third night, he knew he had her locked up.

In her room his three years of celibacy found relief but not passion in her arms, and as he climaxed he cried out, “Laura! Oh, Laura!” and didn’t even realized he’d done so. And because it wasn’t her but a faceless simulacrum, the recognition only made him angry and disgusted with his selfishness. And so the next day found him making travel arrangements for Italy.

In Italy he tried to destroy her memory once and for all. Despite the temptations of Rome’s priceless artwork and dazzling jewels, he’d always preferred the Italian coast. He rode the train down to Venice and for several days consoled himself with the serene beauty of her museums and palaces and cathedrals. He hadn’t a gift for languages other than English, but he knew more Italian than he’d let on. A sympathetic chat with the server rewarded him with a fine outdoor table that overlooked St. Mark’s Square. He nursed a Campari – drunk was never his style – and watched through his mirrored Ray-Bans at the steady procession of early summer tourists as they strolled and chattered and occasionally splashed across the bright sunlit pavement.

He spotted her, similarly seated at a similar restaurant along the square. A tall, raven-haired beauty, her hair caught up in a Prada silk scarf and her own expression inscrutable behind large dark glasses. An elegant thing to watch. He slipped into his hunter persona, which meant the prey wasn’t even aware of being stalked. He fished a worn Graham Greene paperback from the hip pocket of his expensive jeans and pretended to read, occasionally looking up to glance about. Request a freshened drink. Looked directly at her and raised a small smile of approval at the view. Reeling her in with practiced expertise.

He focused on his book and half an hour later was rewarded with a slim and expensively elegant figure standing beside his table. She held a pair of Campari’s.

“I despise men who can do nothing more than look. I prefer a man who has the courage to act on his interest.” Her voice was deep and she spoke English with an Italian accent. The Greene novel was her tip off. “Do you have the courage of your convictions?”

Her name was Francesca and his was Paul and they spent long mornings and nights entwined in silken linens in her fashionable apartment that overlooked the Grand Canal. He learned there was an older husband who was out of the way and was never spoken of, and he gathered the money came from banking. He escorted her to the opera and the casino and a procession of receptions. Her lovemaking was superb and brought him to his knees, as he did for her.

But at the end of each bout, he was left unsatisfied no matter how he tried to forget. He couldn’t lose himself in her and mentally held part of himself back despite their mutual lack of physical inhibition. And at the end of several glorious weeks, as they sat on her planter-filled private terrace where they’d made love in the darkness the night before, she leaned forward over the remains of breakfast to drop a lingering kiss upon his cheek.

“My husband returns tomorrow,” she said, “and we must return to our responsibilities.” Her dark eyes were luminous and filled with regret.

It wasn’t a stab to the gut because he didn’t love Francesca. He knew what love was, and never again would he mistake its doppelganger for the real thing. And yet the cold realization that this distraction was ending washed over him. It was like waking from a pleasant dream to discover you were back in the nightmare. He took her graceful hand and pressed it to his lips. “You are superb, Francesca. It’s a pity your husband doesn’t appreciate you.”

A smile twitched her sensuous features. “Don’t concern yourself, Paul. He gives me the appreciation I need, and I satisfy him in return. It is enough.” Then her features sobered, and her hand turned in his to give it a gentle squeeze. “I hope you find her.” He must have looked startled, and she added, “The woman you lost. Because I do not believe you can forget her.”

He attempted a gentlemanly rally over a table cluttered with the remains of their pastries and café au lait. “Was it that obvious? It was never my intention. My attraction to you was sincere.”

“As was mine. But I learned long ago, Paul, that Life is made from compromise. And these leave unhappy fingermarks on us all. Visible to those who know how to see it.”

She gave him a small smile then, but it didn’t move past her lips, and in her he saw how hollow her life had become. The daily regret and resignation that accompanied a loveless marriage.

And with a flash of insight he realized that, if he continued as he was, he was seeing himself in another decade.

He didn’t want that life for himself. Didn’t want to become that man.

Instead, the life he craved was with a beautiful, irresistible, maddening woman who made his loins twitch and his hungry soul complete. He still wanted her, no matter how he pretended otherwise.

Damn her to hell.

[To be continued...]

 


	3. Part 1 – Steele in the Dark

Restless and unsatisfied, and with Francesca out of his life, he placed a call to Daniel. “Come to France, my boy!” Steele could hear the ice cubes tinkle in his mentor’s Waterford tumbler. He had learned about First Class from Daniel. “My villa on the Riviera awaits you with open arms!” Then Daniel added sardonically, “Which is more than Linda ever offered you.” It annoyed him, because he didn’t need Daniel to remind what an idiot he’d been to believe he was happy as Remington Steele.

So they sat on Daniel’s bougainvillea-draped veranda and drank wine during the day and whiskeys at night and Steele could speak of nothing but Laura. Daniel temporarily distracted him with a con against a nasty hoodlum who deserved to be shorted twenty-thousand quid. The sting was fun but ultimately unsatisfying because he kept glancing about to see why Laura wasn’t there at his side. He didn’t want his share of the proceeds and he didn’t care that this disinterest troubled Daniel.

Finally, when he could distract himself no more and he began to worry about the drink, he placed a phone call and packed an overnight bag, and with curt apologies to Daniel drove his rented Maserati far too fast along the tight winding coastal road between the Riviera and Cannes to visit an old friend.

“Degare! Remington!” Henri’s enthusiastic grin was genuine and the slender, much-older gentleman embraced his young charge with a series of kisses on each cheek, again, and a third.

“Where is Joelle?” Steele asked as he followed this quasi-father figure into the cool solitude of the centuries-old house within the old quarter of Cannes. Joelle was Henri’s daughter and, for a brief period after a twelve-year old lad had fled England for a life of opportunity, Henri had cared for them both. As a street-wise lad he had been Joelle’s older protector, and in return Henri gave him a home and taught him the twin skills of sailoring and smuggling. He remembered it as a happy time until he was again overcome by the itch to move along.

 “Joelle is at the hotel. But she sends all her love and will join us for dinner.” Henri was long retired from smuggling and had invested the proceeds in a small hotel that he and Joelle operated. Joelle had been infatuated with Remington the last they met, and now Henri fixed his protégé with an arched eyebrow. “She has a beau, now. A good young man.”

 Steele held up his hands. “I wouldn’t dream of interfering, my friend.”

 At that, Henri inspected him with a knowing eye. “No, I do not think you will. I do not see your Miss Holt, nor do you have the look of a man who is happy in love.”

 Steele’s face darkened and he looked away. Tugged at an earlobe. “No,” he said briefly.

 Henri considered that. “Then we will not speak of it.” The smile returned and he ushered Steele through the house and out the back to a small, sun-drenched patio with a view of the Cannes harbor. He paused along their way in the comfortable kitchen to collect carafes of wine and water and nodded for Steele to bring the tray holding glasses and colorful ceramic bowls filled with olives and nuts, sliced cheeses and bread.

 They basked in the warm sun and nibbled on crudités and spoke of inconsequentials. Gradually the warmth and the wine and Henri’s non-judgmental companionship worked their magic and began to salve the deep wounds until the drink had sufficiently loosened his tongue and he finally felt able to speak of his heart and how it was irrevocably shattered. He told Henri of how he had honored their Cannes agreement, and how his hopes had come true and their stand-off had finally ended. Of their growing closeness and sense of attachment. How Laura’s trust in him was rattled by the set-up regarding the paste gemstones and the uncertainties that Norman Keyes had viciously inflamed.

 And then the painful part, when Steele had been happy to let Laura handle the tedium of background checks for William Westfield’s senatorial candidacy. His stupidity at not getting a full night’s sleep thanks to a movie marathon and dozing off the following morning while Laura briefed him on the client’s details. How one of the power magnates tried to derail the investigation by setting up the agency to lose its license. And Laura’s wrongly blaming him for its wholly unpreventable loss, while – unfathomable to him – she developed an attraction to Westfield himself.

 And then he made himself describe the most damming part of it all. The part that drove him away. “Losing the agency’s license shut us down. Doors locked. The perfect time to explore what we meant to each other!” He gestured angrily while, across the small table, Henri listened with his usual implacability. “No professional pressures, no distractions from cases. No gunshots to interrupt yet another intimate moment. Instead, the bloody woman backs away in terror once again! Wants to _think_ about whether we even have a relationship! As if three bloody years together couldn’t convince her! And then the _piece d’resistance_. The _coup de’gras_! She goes chasing off after bloody Westfield!

 “And, dammit,” he allowed, “the man’s perfect! Westfield has the looks and charisma of a Jack Kennedy. Americans are all bloody potty about him. This Westfield wasn’t even a real senatorial candidate. Just a pawn used by two bitter old men to take each other down. And poor Laura can’t resist a victim. It’s like opium to an addict. She had to take Westfield under her wing. Make everything right. His being a victim only magnified my shortcomings.”

 He focused his attention on his near empty glass, swirling the dregs of an excellent local wine as if the patterns could somehow give insight into past and future. “He’s everything I’m not. Obvious. Simple. Virtuous. Radiates absolute sincerity and that good old Protestant work ethic that Laura fantasizes over.” His voice grew angry, then, and his jaw clenched and the muscle there worked overtime. “She hadn’t known him more than 48 hours when she agreed to join him for a weekend in Mexico. I watched her board the plane.” The glass he’d held suddenly shattered against the patio’s low wall. “Dammit! Why does she throw herself at every man she’s barely met but never once at me!”

 Henri said, ever so gently, “She slept with him, then?”

 “I don’t know!” His voice broke, and he paused until he thought he’d mastered himself. “I thought we were moving forward. That she’d finally overcome her reticence and was willing to give us a try. But instead of spending our enforced vacation together, she chose to spend it with Westfield.”

 “And so you left.”

 “What else could I do, Henri? She chose the other man. I’d no place in her life. I thought I was her Remington Steele. I tried…God help me, I tried. Yet nothing I did was ever good enough.” He paused, and then voiced his real fear. “Three years and she still can’t accept me.”

 “Does she love you?”

 He blurted the answer without pausing to consider. “Yes. I think so. But every time we draw close?” He snapped his fingers. “She runs as fast and far as she can…I think she’s afraid of love.”

 Henri’s knowing eyes widened with astonishment. “Afraid of love? How could a person fear the most beautiful thing in the world?”

 “How, indeed? There’s the rub, Henri. Because, long ago, the two people she loved most, the two whom she thought loved her most, instead abandoned her.”

 “So your running away is perhaps not the wisest thing you could have done?” His voice was rich with irony, and he leaned forward to carefully select another olive.

 “I’m not at fault, here!” Steele snapped back. “Dammit! How many times can a man be pushed away before he realizes either she’s a cocktease or he’s a fool!” Henri wisely chose not to respond to that outburst. Steele continued to stare blindly at the harbor spread below them. Then finally scrubbed his face with his hands.

 “I’m sorry, my friend. That was uncalled for.”

 “It sounds to me,” Henry said slowly, choosing his words, “that you’ve both made a foolish choice in caring for each other. Each of you runs away when threatened by love. Laura from you, and you from her. Just as you did to me and Joelle, all those years ago.” He tilted his head to study Steele and the gesture gave him a birdlike appearance. “It took me some time to understand why you left us when you did. When our little family was growing close. Now I know.”

 “I’m over that, now. And you’ve got a bloody clear-headed way of describing the situation.”

 “Then why don’t you be done with her? It sounds to me that you’ve tried to show her your feelings. You can’t control how Laura thinks or feels. You’ve had three years to try this. Perhaps…it is time to let her go?”

 He buried his head in his hands. “I can’t,” he groaned. “I see her in every woman who has her auburn hair or her elegant self-possession. Three years of being at her side and she’s twisted into my very DNA.” He released a long, shuddering sigh. Looked up again at the boats chasing the wind across the bay. “I tried. I really tried, Henri. I had a woman in Sydney and another in Venice. God help me, I was crying Laura’s name as I made love to those poor ladies.”

 “That sounds like love to me, Degare. You love your Laura deeply.”

 “I can’t love, Henri. Love’s nothing but a destroyer.”

 “Hmm. Then if so, I suppose you have nothing more to lose?”

 Now Steele turned, hearing something in his old mentor’s voice. “Eh?”

 “I only meant that, if you have nothing left to lose, then it is permissible to make one last, enormous gamble. Put all your winnings on the table for one last throw of the dice.”

 He barked out a laugh. “I have no winnings, Henri, remember? The croupier’s already called the play.”

 “Do you want to know if she loves you?”

  _Do I want to know? What if I learn that she doesn’t love me? That would truly be the end. At least right now I can pretend and hope._

 “I already know that answer,” he lied. “If Laura loved me, she’d be here by now.” Now it was Henri’s turn to look perplexed. “I left a trail from LA to here that Laura could have followed using just a fraction of her intellect. Direct flights using my passport names, and each to that home country. She knows my taste in hotels. I registered under those same names. I kept expecting her to materialize in my room. Chew my butt out for abandoning her. Shout my list of transgressions. Burying her love under outrage so she could pretend it doesn’t exist.” He sighed and looked out again at the lavulite bay and the white shapes of boats as they drifted in and out of his view. In and out of Laura’s life. Ruffling its surface but leaving her untouched at her core. Emotion rose from deep within him and as his eyes prickled, he was astonished to realize it was grief. It was the one emotion he hadn’t anticipated.

 Henri must have recognized it, for he quietly rose and disappeared into the small, comfortable home, giving him privacy to wrestle with these unexpected feelings that had supplanted his anger.

 A gaping chasm opened within him, and it had the shape and size of a sassy brunette with flashing brown eyes and enough passion for them both. And he desperately needed her to fill that empty space again.

 To be continued...


	4. Part 1 - Steele in the Dark

Steele awoke from his nap on Henri’s patio to discover that the sun had shifted and that he was alone. Embarrassed, he wandered inside and found the house was empty. Henri must have headed down the hill to check on his little hotel. Steele helped himself to a shower and a shave, donned a loose shirt, casual slacks, and barefooted loafers that suggested the Riviera and, feeling more himself, called Daniel to let him know he wouldn’t be back that night. Then he strolled down the street to the little hotel that Henri had purchased and managed since he’d given up the smuggling life.

Joelle glanced up from her reception desk as the entrance bell tinkled, and her smile was wide and genuine as she recognized her visitor. “Degare! It is good to see you!” She crossed the room to give him a kiss, and he was surprised to discover how chaste it was.

He said with affection, “Your papa tells me I have a rival, now.”

The beautiful smile broadened. “He is not as handsome as you, nor as clever as you. But he will do.” Then the smile faded. “I’m sorry to learn you’re unhappy. I liked your Laura very much.”

There was no possible reply to that, so he merely shrugged and headed for the kitchen, where he found solace in distraction as he helped their cook Simone to skin a rabbit and slice vegetables for the evening ragout.

It was over their simple dinner of stew and wine and crusty bread that he told them about Ireland and his one opportunity to learn something about his past. “I received a pocket watch in the mail, with a note that my father wanted me to have it. There was an inscription inside, and I traveled back to Ireland to find it.”

“And what did you learn?” asked a breathless Joelle, and he snorted.

“It was all for naught. There was a murdered man and an aborted attempt to kidnap a race horse named Xanadu, and all I got for my trouble was amnesia and very nearly murdered myself.”

“Only you, Degare, could turn a simple search for family into a murder investigation,” teased Henri with an affectionate smile.

“Well, the man I wanted was dead, and with him my only lead. The only good that came of it all was my predicament softened Laura. She’s always insisted on learning my real name. It shocked her when she understood that I didn’t know.”

“You will always have me and Papa,” said Joelle loyally. “You are always welcome here.”

He smiled, then, and briefly touched her hand. She probably was the closest person he’d ever had to a little sister. Then, before things got too emotional, he rose and began to gather their used dishes. The pair rose to help, and once the plates were washed and they were seated again over café au lait, Joelle asked, “You really lost your memory, Degare?” Her doe-brown eyes were wide with disbelief.

“Until I clonked my head again. Laura kept me safe and put the pieces together so we foiled the kidnappers.”

“She was with you?”

“Not at first. She flew to Ireland when she learned I’d been injured. I hadn’t told her about the watch. Or the trip. She’d only want to tag along and help. And I didn’t want her pity. So I didn’t volunteer that my weekend away was to another continent.”

“Then she must love you very much, to fly all that way and help you.”

“Not hardly. I expect she flew all that way to ream me out and make sure I didn’t sully the reputation of her precious Remington Steele.”

“Remington Steele is a very famous man,” said Henri. “He is even in the European papers now and again. But? If you say that you are not Remington Steele? Then, who are you?”

It was Laura’s persistent question. _Who are you?_

_Who am I?_

He slowly shook his head. “I can’t be Remington Steele. I can’t work with Laura and not have her. And I can’t continue to be Steele unless I’m with her in LA. I can’t go back to my old life. Remington Steele can’t be arrested for burglary. Or smuggling. It would destroy the agency and Laura with it. I won’t do that to her.”

“You love her?” Henri asked again.

He released a long sigh. Rubbed a knuckle against his nose as he stared into the dregs of his coffee. Finally, he said sadly, “I don’t believe I’ve ever known what love really is.”

“I love you,” said Henri simply, and Degare heard the deep affection in his former mentor’s voice.

“That’s not how I meant it,” Steele said dryly.

“I know. But you should think on it. I love you like the son you are to me. I accept you for who you are.”

He considered that. Nibbled on a biscuit from the laid-out tray. Then, “I don’t believe Laura has ever accepted me for who I am.”

“And who are you?”

His throat tightened. “A thief and a liar and a cut-rate con man. A man who can’t give her a name, because he doesn’t know what it is.”

“Well, since you cannot go backward, then you must move forward. And to move forward? To have what they call the fresh start, then you must have the fresh name as well.”

That made Steele laugh. “New name, Henri. I don’t think my reputation can take being called ‘fresh’…No. I passed through so many homes, I don’t know my birth name. And my name was whatever suited the next adopter.”

“Then you are at liberty to adopt whatever name you choose.”

“Hmph. There’s always more Bogart movies, I suppose.”

Henri rose. It was growing late. “Tomorrow, Degare, we will take the boat out and do a little fishing, yes? Let’s see if you remember the sailing skills I taught you. And you will have all day tomorrow to think.”

[To be continued...]


	5. Part 1 – Steele in the Dark

Henri was quite the psychologist. As their small, sleek sailboat slid gracefully back into its slip the following late afternoon, his heart was well and truly broken. But the anger was gone and he’d made his decision and finally knew what he had to do. Henri, he decided, was a sentimental fool, and it was time to tack toward a new heading. The following day he made his farewells and drove back up the coast to Daniel’s, where his next act was to place a telephone call to LA.

“Monroe Henderson.”

“Hello, Monroe.” His voice was flat.

“Mick! Hey, man! Where are you? What’re you up to?”

He released a long sigh. “France. I’ve been staying with Daniel.”

“It’s good to hear from you! I was beginning to think you’d taken the long, one-way swim.”

His mouth twisted. “You know I’ve never had the courage for that.”

“You want me to send your things on? Some of those suits are pretty naff.”

“I don’t think Remington Steele will be needing them again. Laura made her choice pretty clear.”

“How would you know that? You haven’t even been around to know.” It was so like Monroe to contradict him.

“Aside from her willingness to jump in bed with Westfield on two days’ notice? While practicing virgin chastity with me for three years?”

“What are you talking about? She was back at your apartment that night. The boys and I barely got out of there without her noticing.” He gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Hell, she spends every Friday night there.”

He sat up sharply. “What in the hell are you talking about, Monroe?”

“Just what I said. She still pays rent on that place. Left it looking as you did. And every Friday night she stops in and doesn’t leave till morning. I don’t know what she’s doing. It’s crazy. Spooky, even. But the place is clean and ready.”

His heart began to pound and the phone receiver was suddenly slick within his clasp. Icy calm, mate. Icy calm. “What are you saying, Monroe?”

“If it were anyone but you, Mick, I wouldn’t have to spell it out. She wants you back. She’s hoping you’ll come back. There ain’t no Westfield dude around.”

He tried for logic. “Monroe, if she wanted me back, she’d have found me. I haven’t exactly been hiding.”

“Maybe you’re not leaving the right kind of trail? Try one with a good, rich scent. With a bauble that’ll attract her.”

He rolled his eyes. “Laura’s never been in it for the baubles. She makes me give them back.”

“Every woman has a weak spot. Figure it out and dangle the bait. She’s ready to bite, my man.”

He thought about it, hard and fast. Despite his better judgment, hope began to surge through his façade of icy calm. “I’d love to be bitten. Hold onto my things, my friend.”

“Good luck, Mick. Hope she’s worth it.”

 

It was the following morning and Daniel found him seated on the patio of his ‘retirement chateau’, a neat cottage whose cozy size was more than compensated by the spacious veranda canopied with pink bougainvillea and lavender wisteria. Steele was happy to have helped his mentor obtain the funds for its purchase; he owed Daniel that, at least.

“You’re up early, my boy.” Daniel was still donned in silk Liberty pajamas and dressing gown, complete with a knotted cravat, and he wandered to a sideboard and poured a cup of coffee from a warming carafe.

“Only since seven. It’s nearly ten. You’re up late.”

Daniel raised an eyebrow. “Do remember I’m retired, won’t you?” He stirred in cream and a touch of sugar, then wandered across the cool tile to join his protégé. At the sight, both eyebrows elevated. “Still sketching, I see?”

Steele grunted as his pencil flew over the cream page of his sketchpad. “I think it’s the gift you engendered that I enjoy most.”

“It was the only way I could get an angry young man to calm down and develop a sense of self-discipline.” It was a rare admission of honesty from this man who had been his mentor and savior and best friend.

Steele gave him a swift smile. “Worked like a charm, as you can see.” He switched to a softer pencil and began shading the sketch, buffing the soft marks with the pad of his pinky.

“Pity we couldn’t turn it into something more lucrative.”

“I was more interested in drawing to please myself, rather than copying another.”

“Yes. You always had that streak of independence,” said Daniel, not bothering to hide his annoyance. Steele knew they both referred to more than sketching. “We could’ve been quite a team.”

“We were, Daniel. We were the best. But insurance retrieval was more lucrative – and more challenging – than forgery or fleecing the foolishly wealthy.”

“And a damned sight more dangerous, my boy.” He deliberately slurped at his coffee, knowing it would annoy just a little. “Just what are you sketching so busily?” For a gentleman of sixty-five, he could still move quickly, and he snatched the large pad before Steele had the chance to pull it away. He growled to himself as Daniel’s eyes widened upon viewing the subject matter.

“That’s—” He cleared his throat. “That’s quite a portrait.”

“You should know enough to leave a man to himself,” he snapped back, angry.

“Does she really look like this?” and Daniel held the pad up to face him. He’d been sketching Laura, of course. A Laura he had never seen. A nude in half-pose, with pert breasts just peeping around from the curve of her back and one leg pulled up, her face turned toward him with that sassy twinkle in her eyes and hair tumbling over her bare shoulder. It was how he longed for her to look at him one day. And during the two hours he’d been sketching it, his wish had been granted.

“A gentleman never tells.” The true answer, of course, was ‘no’ and his annoyance and embarrassment grew in equal measure as Daniel leafed through the pages. There were a few sketches of landscapes – the view from Henri’s home, an LA cityscape – but mostly the pages were filled with Laura. All caught from memory because he’d never had the courage to ask her to pose. But he’d memorized her every feature, and on the pages he let himself revel in her form and could pretend he had ownership of her. Laura in her fedora. How she looked during that first case, in the bare-shouldered red gown with her hair pinned up and freckles galore. Absorbed over paperwork at her desk. Dozing behind the Rabbit’s steering wheel during a shared late-night stakeout, her features relaxed and impossibly young. Fragments of Laura, her hands, a leg, a half-portrait, all spilling across the pages from margin to margin.

Having sufficiently humiliated him, Daniel finally passed back the sketchpad and quipped, “You have got it bad,” and then wandered over to see what was on offer at the breakfast table. As he transferred fruit and a poached egg to his plate, he said, “I thought you were done and finished with her.”

“Well. A man’s entitled to change his mind.” He closed the sketchpad and began to pack his pencils, knife, and eraser. Daniel had spoiled it for him and the magic had disappeared from his portrait.

“What changed your mind? Your friend Henri? I haven’t seen you this chipper in weeks.”

“I spoke with my old friend Monroe last night. I’ve mentioned him before.”

“Ah. Smuggling across the Caribbean and Bermuda.” His expression conveyed that he still thought the career choice quite beneath his ward.

Tools packed, Steele now helped himself to coffee and joined his friend at the breakfast table. “He’s been living in LA the past year. I gave him a leg up. He’s a nice import-export going on.”

Now Daniel looked interested. “Our kind of import-export?”

“The legal kind,” said Steele severely.

“Pity.” Daniel’s attention returned to his fruit cup. “I assume this has something to do with Linda. I knew there was trouble when you telephoned LA.”

Steele set down his cup. “How did you know I called LA?”

Daniel shrugged and didn’t answer.

“At any rate, I’ll be moving on tomorrow. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Moving on! Why, Harry, I feel as though we were only just getting reacquainted!”

“Yes. Well…I’ve an idea and I’d like to follow it up. So I’m off to Dublin.”

Now Daniel did look surprised. “Dublin? Why ever for? I thought you were finished with the Old Country. They gave you nothing, as I recall your saying quite emphatically on more than one occasion.”

“Nothing save my birth. And my name.”

“But…you don’t know your name.”

“And that’s precisely my problem.” Steele gestured with his stirring spoon. “I’ve an idea.”

“That’s your first problem, Harry.”

He ignored that. “I’ve an idea that, just perhaps, one of the stumbling blocks for Laura is that she doesn’t know why I can’t tell her my real name. Ever since we met, she’s thought I’m hiding it.”

“But you never knew who your father was,” protested Daniel. “Which is probably a good thing, because if you did know, you’d probably kill him.”

He remembered those days, back in his angry youth, when he would have flattened the man who spawned and then abandoned him to a catch-as-can life. Now he shook his head. “I’m over that, Daniel. Maybe, if I can present myself to Laura with my real name, she’ll understand who I really am and that I’m really trying to be honest with her. And maybe then she’ll take me back.”

“Sounds like a fool’s errand, Harry. What if you don’t like the man you discover you are? Or what if your father doesn’t want to be found? Disappointment’s a cruel thing.” And he shook his elegant silvered head.

He paused to consider that, and then said, slowly, as he thought his way through it, “It’s possible. But right now I’m willing to take that chance. As Henri reminded me, my hand’s mostly played out. It’s time for that last desperate gamble.”

“But where will you start? Birth records? Not every birth was recorded.” It was almost as though Daniel was trying to discourage him. _Still trying to protect me from disappointment. He’s like the father I never had._

He fished in his trouser pocket and laid an item on the woven tablecloth between them. “I thought I’d start with this.”

The silvered eyebrows rose. “A watch? Where on earth did that come from?”

“It was sent to me last year by a man in Dublin who’s since moved on. I thought I’d try tracing it again.” He opened it and the soft tune of ‘ _When Irish Eyes Are Smiling_ ’ tinkled forth, in competition with the small birds that chattered in the arbor above them. “To S.J. from K.L.”

“Quite the detective now, eh?” quipped Daniel. “Well, good luck to you.”

“Thank you, Daniel,” he said and his emotion was heartfelt. “And how about you? Any plans?”

“Oh, nothing definite. I’ve an ear to the ground. Perhaps something will turn up.”

  
[To be continued...]


	6. Part 1 – Steele in the Dark

**Los Angeles**

The night Remington Steele disappeared, Laura didn’t sleep. All she knew was that Fred had taken him to LAX, and until the airline service desks reopened, she had no way to trace his flights. She wasn’t the type to sit around and wait, so she drove like a madwoman all over town, checking his favorite haunts, looking to see if perhaps he was hiding in the Bowery, or his favorite movie houses, or even the fencing studio. In case he’d instructed Fred to lie for him. But she didn’t seriously think Fred would do that, since the man was clear about who actually paid his salary. When the eastern skyline was tinted with paler blue and the west-bound red-eye flights began to descend through the LA skies, she finally wheeled her weary little car back to Century City. She homed to her agency like any creature in distress; it was the only place her sleep-fogged mind could think to go. It was child’s play to break into the still-sealed offices, and she stumbled as she slipped through the silent reception and into her office. But the long row of open, empty file drawers, from which the auditors had removed the agency’s files, forestalled any solace and their emptiness was a personal betrayal. It felt as though she inhabited a corpse. Mr. Steele was gone, her case files were gone, and she had nothing left.

 So she did what she usually did when her mind was in turmoil.

_They had a full-scale argument about whether Mitchell Knight was pushed or had jumped from his balcony, and Laura disappeared into her office in the hope that her ersatz Mr. Steele would drop it. He didn’t, of course, and barreled through her closed door still ranting about why she was wrong. But she had become very good at ignoring him, and frustrated, he turned his attention to Murphy, who had made the mistake of entering Laura’s office to see what their latest argument was about. “In all the times you’ve come into this office,” he asked with a wave in Laura’s direction, “have you ever found her doing nothing?”_

_Judging from his expression, poor Murph clearly regretted being dragged into whatever argument his curiosity now trapped him into. “Well, no, I suppose. I guess I never have—”_

_"Of course not!" he interrupted and stabbed an angry finger toward Laura, who stood behind the security of her desk and pretended to be absorbed with the paperwork in front of her. “That’s because she’s always thinking! She’s always making little lists! It keeps her from having to think about real people and real feelings!”_

The list in her hand contained eight items. The first was to get the agency license back. Devise a cover story for Mildred. A cover story for the press.

 _You were right, of course. Business-first kept me from thinking about how I really felt about you_.

Thus it was that she was sitting in the locked offices of the Remington Steele Investigations at 9:30 am when she heard someone rattle the locked front doors.

_It’s him!_

Her heart jolted and she was off like a shot into the large reception area. Silhouetted against the hallway lighting before the glass doors was a familiar tall, lean figure. But it wasn’t Him. It was Bob, the mailman who was assigned to the Towers.

She unlocked the doors and admitted the visitor.

“Howdy, Miss Holt. Where’s Mildred this morning?” He handed her the packet of envelopes held in his hand.

She only now realized that the lights were off. She hastily moved to turn them on. “Late night case,” she said, the lie flowing easily. “They’re sleeping in.”

He shook his head. “Never a dull moment, here. See ya tomorrow.”

 _Maybe. Or not._ She moved back to her office, slowly leafing through the envelopes. Bills, payments… and a large manila envelope addressed in a familiar, precise hand. _Mr. Steele’s._ Her heart began to thud and her breath caught. She suddenly didn’t want to touch it. She heard Fred’s voice again. _We stopped at the main post office, then he asked me to take him to the airport._ She didn’t want to know what was inside. She knew, and the sudden wave of fear unbalanced her. _He’s gone. He’s returned the keys. His Remington Steele IDs. His credit cards._ She hadn’t planned to cancel the credit cards. She was terrified for him and wanted him to stay safe. Wanted him to know that she trusted him.

_Besides, we both know I could use the charges to track you down._

Laura Holt was a detective foremost, and while her fear battled curiosity, this was Laura, and so her curiosity won. She took up a letter opener from her desk and slit open one end and turned the envelope upside down. But nothing slid out, no keys, no laminated ID. She reached inside and instead extracted a single sheet of paper. She stared at it and, as she read it again and again, she felt a prickle spring from behind her eyes.

“It’s our license,” she whispered. Her voice was unaccountably hoarse. “You got us reinstated.”

The hot heat of shame washed through her. “I yelled at you for losing this. And somehow, you got it back.” She looked up a moment and struggled to get her emotions back under control. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to the ceiling. “I misjudged you.”

That was when Laura realized that the man who portrayed Remington Steele well and truly loved her. She broke his heart yesterday when she’d rejected him outright. She’d seen it in his face, but she was too scared to acknowledge what he showed her openly. He wanted to test their relationship now that the distractions were swept away. Instead, she was terrified precisely because there were no more distractions between them and she’d have to take his overture seriously. So instead, she rejected him. And despite her cold-hearted response, he still returned to her the one thing that meant most to her in all the world.

Correction…the second most precious thing in the world.

And so she called Mildred back into work. Over the next several days, she had Mildred follow the movements of Blaine / Fabrini / Murell / O’Leary / Quintain. And meanwhile she pretended that everything was business as usual at Remington Steele Investigations, while it was all she could do to keep body and soul together.

Mildred had easily located Richard Blaine and his flight to Sydney. Laura wasn’t surprised that he checked into a posh hotel. What surprised the hell out of her was that none of the agency cards paid for it. _What on earth is he living off of?_ She had Mildred monitor the Australian news and her affection was immediately replaced by fury at the media reports that millionaire Freddie Smith had lost a valuable painting. _That’s what he’s living off of. Damn him!_ Of course it was him; Mr. Steele was practically jumping up and down and thumbing his nose at her. She considered flying twenty hours across the globe just to chew him out for risking the agency’s reputation, but before she could book her flight he vanished. Doubtless he’d anticipated her response.

A week later, Paul Fabrini arrived at the Rome airport. And promptly disappeared, despite Mildred’s wizardry. Days stretched to a week, then two and then three without a clue to his whereabouts, and Laura began to worry. _Did I miss my chance? Were you expecting me to fly to Australia and bring you back? Did you leave because I didn’t turn up and chew you out? Bring you home?_

As the weeks went by without news, she kept a brave face and kept her worries to herself. She staged fake updates from Steele. God only knew why Mildred bought the ridiculous cover story, that he’d been called back to help his former CIA colleagues on an overseas case in pursuit of the mysterious Mr. Quintain and colleagues. Maybe Mildred believed it precisely because it was so ridiculous? In the meanwhile, there were cases during the long, lonely days to keep the two of them occupied:  skip traces, a security installation for a small private museum, socialites worried about their husbands, business magnates worried about their young trophy wives. The LA social scene missed the exuberant Mr. Steele, and Laura found she didn’t enjoy attending the litany of receptions without him. There was a big film festival for which Steele had purchased tickets months earlier, and Laura dragged Mildred there in the foolish hope that he’d be there, and was just as foolishly disappointed when he wasn’t. They both left the event early, broken-hearted.

Viewed dispassionately, their situation was just as it had begun with her and Murphy and Bernice, and she resurrected all her old tricks to disguise the reality that Mr. Steele didn’t exist.

_“You know, I had the opportunity to look over some of your old case reports, and I have to admit you used quite a bit of creativity in putting them together.”_

_In other circumstances, she would have relished his admiration of her skills, but her attention had been focused elsewhere. “That was before you were you. I had to keep the illusion alive that there really was a Remington Steele.”_

A few clients walked away when the glamorous Mr. Steele couldn’t meet with them, but by now most accepted the agency’s acumen and Laura readily convinced them that Mr. Steele would oversee the operations. It confirmed for Laura that their reputation was secure at last, but it made her sad to discover how easily she slipped back into her old Remington Steele shell-game of pretending the man existed. And while it was gratifying to know that clients trusted the Agency’s reputation, the knowledge was a hollow victory. She wanted her partner back, despite her years of cursing his intrusion.

The weeks crawled past and there was still no trace of him, and one quiet afternoon when her despair was greatest, she closed her office door and punched into her phone a seldom-called number in Denver. Then she hastily replaced the receiver before it could ring. She wasn’t going to cry on Murph’s shoulder. This was her own mess and he’d warned her long ago that this would happen. Murphy would never say it aloud, but she knew he’d be thinking it. _I told you so._

And then, just days later, Mildred scurried into her office and announced that, the previous week, Michael O’Leary had flown from De Gaulle airport outside Paris to Dublin. He had checked into a mid-range hotel for five days near the city center. There was also a car rental that was returned to its airport location the same day he checked out. Unfortunately, a week had lapsed by the time Mildred discovered this, and her check of the airports found no record of O’Leary’s departure.

But Laura knew there was still one name left on the passport list, and she asked Mildred to focus her attention on Douglas Quintain. And just a few hours later, Mildred scurried back into her office and announced that the mysterious Quintain had flown to Heathrow and was registered at the Hampton in central London. Just two days ago.

As obvious as obvious could be.

And Laura’s heart began to sing again.

To be continued...

_[Dialogue from 'Etched in Steele' and 'Steele of Approval']_


	7. Part 1 – Steele in the Dark

**Dublin and London**

Thanks to Monroe’s intel and buoyed by an optimism fueled on hope, Michael O’Leary flew from Cannes to Paris and then to Dublin, taking care to leave great footprints spread across his native city and firm in the conviction that Laura couldn’t miss his clues, He knew damn well that she would have memorized – and probably even had little lists of – every hint, both truth and lie, that he dropped about his ‘mysterious past’. And since she hadn’t been the one with amnesia, she’d also remember every detail of their own trip last spring to Dublin and why she had found him there. He wagered against the Fates that, from those clues, she would deduce why Michael O’Leary now reappeared in Ireland, and he knew her insatiable curiosity (and perhaps even her outrage) would prompt her to follow him. And so, while he drew on every detective skill he learned from her to trace faint leads and suggestions regarding the musical watch’s origins, there was a little ticker tape running through the back of his mind that kept asking when would Laura finally appear. Until she did, it was a race to follow up every lead he could.

It was as he chatted up a prostitute in a Dublin bar – lime and lager for her and Guinness for him and payment in advance for a night he wouldn’t spend with her – that a possible name finally emerged.

“Well, Prince Charming,” she said once they were settled at the bar with their drinks and a hefty tip, so the barkeep wouldn’t toss her out, “there were a K-lad who had a reputation back then. Kevin, as he liked to call himself.” Molly was her name and while she had maybe ten years on Steele, a life on the streets made her look twice his age.

Despite his caution, his pulse began to race. Was this about to be the turn in his fortune? “You know him? You met him?”

“Not bloody likely, ta very much. We girls all knew _about_ him, though.”

“Who was he? Local?”

“Not bloody likely. Brit, he was.”

Steele frowned, his pint forgotten. “English? Named Kevin?”

She shrugged, her own hand not leaving her glass. “Sorry, Charming. Too late to ask for ye money back.”

He waved it away. “No, no. The money’s fine. What do you know about him?”

She snorted into her drink. “That he was a right mean bastard. All the girls knew.”

“What else?” he repeated. “Any idea?” He ran through the mental list of possible jobs that would bring an Englishman named Kevin to Ireland. “Military? Tout? Bar-keep? Underworld?”

“Don’t think anyone knew. He kept to himself. But a right bastard.” It was the second time she said this, and his heart sank because it suggested this part of the rumor mill was true. Somehow, it figured.

“Why was that, Molly?”

“He liked his whores. And that’s alright,” she added hastily, “it’s good for business. But it weren’t good when he took to drink. Cause he liked to beat us up good.”

A wave of revulsion threatened to bring up his own drink, and he pushed the dark pint aside. It wasn’t what he hoped to discover about his father. But given his history, it sadly made pathetic sense. “So he has a police record?”

Molly barked with laughter. “Them lot! What do they care about women like us? ‘Sides, he had some kind of angle. Connected to ‘em, we thought. Some said he were police, sure as they ne’er lifted a finger against him.”

“Surely your pimps went after him for beating you girls. Scaring off the custom.”

“And got themselves arrested for their efforts,” she said, and the sarcasm in her voice was deep. “So la-dee-da. We all learnt to keep away from Fancy-Arsed Kevin. But some new girl wouldn’t know, or wouldn’t care, and she’d end up more raped than not and a pair of shiners and busted ribs to match. Then he’d disappear for weeks.”

He had an idea. “Went back to London, maybe? When it got too hot?”

“Mebbe.” She took another large swallow of her lager. She wouldn’t care why, as long as Kevin was gone.

The pit in his stomach was still raw, but he had to ask the question. One of those women might have been his mother. “What about the girls he used, Molly? What happened to them?”

“What do you think happened?” She said ‘tink’, dropping the ‘h’ with her heavy brogue. “Them as he beat up. They disappeared, o’course. Trip to London or France to take care of their little problems. Or they didn’t. And went to the laundries instead. You know how it is.”

He knew. Being a Catholic country, an unwed, pregnant Irish girl was a pariah. The lucky ones left the country for an abortion. The unlucky ones ended up in one of the laundries or other labor facilities operated by nuns from the many Catholic orders. The girls were forced to repent their evil ways through back-breaking work that could trigger a miscarriage, and they were kept so underfed that their newborn infants failed to thrive. It was the black secret at the heart of Ireland. There were times when he wondered how he had escaped that horror and survived. A naïve person might bless God for that survival, but he knew better, because no God would ever let such cruelty exist on behalf of His name.

But he was after clues, not philosophy, and he changed the subject. “Any idea what happened to this Kevin?” and she shook her head.

“He disappeared, finally. Never saw him again. That was maybe ten years ago. We all guessed he’s in the Liffey with a great knife in his gut. Mind, no body was found. But it were nice to think that.”

Steele had to agree. It had been thirty-five years. A nasty man such as that would have met a cruel end. Doubtless it was better this way.

He had one more question. The most important one. “Any idea as to his surname? Any rumors?”

Molly shrugged again. “He called himself Kevin.” And she just made a good point, he realized. Kevin might not even be his real name. He tried for one more lead.

“Does the letter ‘L’ ring any bells?”

“Nay, Charming.” But her voice held a trace of affection. “If you do find the bugger, take him out, eh? Do us girls a favor.”

He thought about being the son of a man who beat and raped prostitutes. He gave her a thin smile. “I expect we’ll all find ourselves standing in line to wait our turn.” He made to rise and pushed himself off his barstool. “Take care of yourself, Molly. Give yourself a night off tonight.”

She gave him a last dazzling smile. “Not till I’m dead, luv. But thanks for the kindness, anyway.”

He returned to the streets and quizzed more of the streetwalkers, and the prostitutes largely confirmed Molly’s story about the mysterious Kevin. The man would cruise the nighttime streets in an expensive car, driving slowly to inspect the selection of prostitutes, or he would emerge on foot from the fog, dressed in stylish topcoat and carrying a walking stick. He’d buy a girl who was desperate for money and warmth, and then use the stick to leave her battered. One of the women remembered a description.

“A mate o’mine once saw him. Tall and dark, he was,” and the bile rose as he listened, and he couldn’t shake the echo of her words. _Tall and dark…tall and dark…_ And he knew it had to be true. He began to hope that Laura wouldn’t turn up. He didn’t know what to tell her now. What to say or what to think.

The irony was Laura had made him into a detective in her image, and he couldn’t let it go. Couldn’t drop what was becoming a horrific line of inquiry. He needed to see those police records that Molly alluded to, and so he finally screwed up his courage and visited the Irish Garda in the guise of the internationally-famous Remington Steele. Heart pounding inwardly, smooth talker outwardly, he spun a tale about tracing an inheritance from America for a man named Kevin L-something. The young female officer with short curly hair was easily charmed by his looks and charisma, and she helpfully pulled the records after a long search through dusty file boxes.

And then as he sat at a poorly lit table in the archives with the neat folder opened before him, he saw the name.

Kevin Landers. From London.

The yellowed page swam briefly before him. He reached out and traced a hesitant fingertip across the unevenly typed words on the standardized report form. _Kevin Landers._

“Is there—” The words stopped coming. He swallowed hard. “Do you have a physical address for him?”

Oblivious to his internal reaction, she pivoted the file around and leafed through its brittle pages. Then she shook her tousled head. “Sorry, Mr. Steele. Just a penciled note that the Chief Constable had words with the gentleman.”

He fell back against the uncomfortable wooden chair, stunned. _Gentleman?! Chief Constable?!_ A Chief Constable in the Garda was a man of considerable power. You didn’t send the CC after a street tough.

_Just who in the hell is this Kevin Landers?_

He thanked her in confusion and returned to the streets for confirmation, pounding pavements with a diligence that would’ve sent Laura into an ecstasy of bliss. He visited the government records office and, while he unearthed birth records for several Landers in the time period of 1951 to 1953, none listed a father named Kevin, and none had an unlisted father.

_(And shortly after he left the Garda headquarters, a telephone call was placed._

_"There's a note here to call you in the event someone asks about Kevin Landers?...Aye. A private detective, no less. Name of Remington Steele. From Los Angeles. Said he's got an inheritance for Landers..." Laughter. "Right. Not bloody likely. Thought you'd like to know. Ta.")_

But the man who still called himself Remington Steele was unaware of the hornet's nest he had just stirred up. His attention was focused on his own investigation. And a growing sadness that Laura still hadn’t appeared. Hadn’t left a message at his hotel.

_Where in the hell is she? Why hasn’t she come to find me?_

_Maybe…maybe because she doesn’t care. Maybe Monroe was wrong._

_Maybe I’m a bloody fool after all._

That was a bad evening. He spent it in a little back street pub, nursing a steady procession of Guinness pints and swearing about women and the bitches they were to a pair of equally intoxicated elderly gentlemen who weren’t choosy about their company. He staggered back to his hotel and was damned lucky that someone didn’t try to roll him while he was intoxicated. He dreamt about making love with Laura on a boat in the south of France, and he woke with the mother of all hard-ons and a helluva hangover. He showered, chewed aspirin, and when he finally could think straight again, he remembered Henri’s words and decided that he was so close to his fresh name, that he may as well keep detecting.

_One last throw of the dice._

So Douglas Quintain flew to London, booked a room at the Hampton, and made his presence known while he worked his old contacts and a few pals in the Irish ex-pat community to uncover who this Kevin Landers might be. He tried not to let his heart sink when Laura didn’t appear at his hotel room to chew his ass out. He would’ve loved to have her chew him out; she was magnificent and unbelievably sexy when she was angry. Her eyes would go wide and her freckles would darken and he’d want to pull her to him and kiss her like she’d never been kissed before.

Damnation. And that hard-on was coming back.

Frustrated, he told himself to be patient and focus on his leads. He made his location and his intentions obvious for Laura to find, and she would encounter no difficulties in locating him. It was a perfect plan. It had just that right combination of romance and challenge that Laura always found irresistible.

Besides, she had to find him soon. He was nearly out of names.

But, naturally, because he was Remington Steele and she was Laura Holt, the elaborate plan he devised to draw her to him did not unfold as anticipated.

In fairness, he had foreseen that the reappearance of Fabrini – Quintain – O’Leary – Blaine – Murell could attract the attention of gentlemen who might still be looking for him. But he thought those gentlemen – and that was a euphemism, as none of them were gentle – would have lost interest after all these years and might have given up looking. It was a chance he was willing to take, if it meant drawing Laura back to him. He knew how to handle those kinds of men.

What he didn't know was how to handle Scotland Yard.

At first, he hadn’t known it was Scotland Yard. He only appreciated that he was under surveillance when the small toothpick he habitually tucked into the frame of his hotel room door was found on the carpet just outside his door, and the folded clothing in a dresser drawer was rearranged. He decided to test his hypothesis, and a day later found himself leading a dark, bowler-hatted man on a merry pursuit across the City of London and into the Underground. He didn’t think anyone was interested in Remington Steele, and he couldn’t fathom why Kevin Landers would interest anyone but himself thirty-odd years later, so he assumed they were after one of his past persona, though only god knew which one. He didn’t dare abandon his hotel since Laura had yet to turn up. But it was obvious he couldn’t stay there, so at three a.m. and carrying minimal belongings in a light suitcase, he slipped out the service entrance of the Hampton and retired to an inexpensive boarding house in SoHo that was managed by a thin, angular woman who was accustomed to tenants who didn’t want questions asked about them.

Even then, his luck didn’t turn. His contacts added little about the mysterious Kevin Landers, but one of them did tip him off that the mystery man who dressed like a Monty Python banker was actually from Scotland Yard. And when Mr. Monty Python turned up across the street from his newly-rented flat, he realized their interest in him was real and serious. So he checked out the Hampton, left his SoHo forwarding address for Laura in case a miracle occurred, and then disappeared onto the streets. He wasn’t keen on sleeping rough, but he’d done it before and he knew it wasn’t forever. Not anymore. But he did mind that it scotched his plans for Laura to find him. She had never been to London and didn’t know the city. Her chances of finding him were slim indeed. He was beset with the odd combination of excitement at being close to identifying his father, and fear that perhaps Laura didn’t want him in her life again as much as he needed her in his. What would happen if she arrived in London to discover he wasn’t in the Hampton? And that he wasn’t at the SoHo flat? Would she assume he had scarpered again? Or would she deduce he was in trouble?

And then, as he lurked around the alleyways outside his cheap flat, desperate for an opportune moment to slip inside for a shower and a kip, a miracle occurred, and all his fears were laid to rest in those stunning moments when he realized that the slim figure pelting up Cox’s alleyway was none other than his beloved Laura. Although in fairness, given the woman had knockout legs, sported a fedora, and shrieked at the top of her lungs as she raced along the sidewalk, who else could it possibly be? He sprinted down the alley after her and caught a delightfully slender ankle as she tried to climb the fence, and he pulled her down and into his arms, intoxicated by her floral scent, and he couldn’t understand how he could have mistaken another woman for her. She had unerringly homed right to him. She wasn’t just a detective. She was a bloody psychic. A witch woman who knew what was written on his heart.

But when he glanced back up the alley, he spotted Monty Python man and he didn’t know what the Yard wanted, and he didn’t know if he’d just thrust Laura into danger. So while he desperately wanted to kiss her until they both ran out of air – regardless of his own physical ripeness having neither showered or brushed his teeth in a week – he knew this wasn’t the time. She found him. And she would find him again. It was kismet. It was enough. So he gave her a flip answer, hoping she understood, and vaulted the fence and hot-footed away from his pursuer, cursing his luck even while his heart sang with the discovery that his plan had worked and Laura had, indeed, traveled six thousand miles to bring him home.

 _Home!_ Only he wouldn’t be going home if whoever stalked his flat caught up with him. He didn’t know who had set the Yard after him or why, but he knew he couldn’t bring the troubles back to L.A. And when he caught up with Chalky, he knew that his troubles were bad, because Chalky was scared. Scared of him, and scared of whoever was after him. Alas for Chalky, Harry was hungry and weary and fed up with living on the streets, and perhaps that was why used more force than necessary to worm the name from the thin, frightened man:  Jenny Buchanan. And Jenny blew his mind out of the water.

Because Kevin Landers was otherwise known as the Earl of Claridge. A serious title that was a headliner in Debrett’s Peerage. During the short train ride out of Paddington having dodged his Scotland Yard pursuers, he scrambled up the discarded newspapers that littered the carriage and read all he could. Irony didn’t begin to cover it. Was he the bastard son of a peer? It sounded like a bad Boy’s Own story, or something out of Dickens, and he didn’t quite know if he should laugh or cry about it.

Fool that he was, he let himself believe that everything was about to finally come right.

He was the bastard offspring of a real live English Earl.

He had a name. And Laura wanted him home.

Fool that he was…

…now he lay dying in a dark doorway of a SoHo alley, clutching his throbbing abdomen while his blood leached through filthy fingers, and it was all too clear that his clever plan had gone for naught.

It was enough to make a cat laugh.

He closed his eyes and, as his life trickled out of him, his one remaining good fortune was that all he could see and hear was Laura.

And when she literally and physically appeared as the cops approached, fifteen feet below him while he barely clung to a greasy lift well above the rozzers’ view, he began to consider that perhaps he’d gotten it wrong, and there might be a god in his heaven after all.

A god who was an angel, and had the lips and love of a woman named Laura Holt.

To be continued...


	8. Part 1 – Steele in the Dark

_“Laura.”_

_"Mr. Steele.” A slow smile lit her beautiful features. “I missed you.”_

_“I missed you, too.”_

_She looked like heaven. Hadn’t changed a bit during those long months apart. Rich chestnut hair tumbled across her shoulders. Elfin features and soft lips curled in invitation as she stepped toward him. Desire danced in her warm, gold-flecked gaze. “Come home with me. Back to L.A.”_

_“Do you still want me?”_

_She stepped closer and the warmth radiated through him. Her subtle floral scent was mixed with a subtle musk and it was an intoxicating brew. So incongruous in a woman so fearless. Desire flushed a delicate pink tinge on the bare skin beneath her open collar. “I need you.”_

_His answering arousal stirred from deep within and sent him tingling. “Do you? Show me.”_

_“I need you, Mr. Steele.” Slim arms rose to encircle his broad shoulders. Then shifted as a hand came to rest against his cheek, so cool and yet the brush of her touch set him aflame. Her other hand shifted up from his back. Paused to caress the skin above his collar, raising gooseflesh as he shivered. Traveled further to entwine fingers in the short brush of his hair. Then pulled him forward and met his lips. Hers open. No half-hearted gesture, but taking him in. Tongue running across sensitive skin, teasing. Then more forceful. He tasted her scent. Her saltiness. His own arms rose now to encircle her, pull her even closer and her heart thudded through the fabric of her blouse. He buried his face into the perfume of her neck, nuzzled her rich hair, felt her responding tremor as his breath traced a sensuous, slow line along the curve of an ear._

_And then her hands traveled forward and downward to pluck at the buttons of his shirt. “Let me show you, Remington,” she whispered, her voice throaty. “Let me show you how much I missed you…”_

The man who was sometimes Remington Steele stumbled and came alert with a sudden jerk. A pair of leather-jacketed louts shouldered hard against him and continued past without breaking stride. “’Ere!” shouted one of the youths over a broad shoulder. “Watch where you’re walkin’, old man!” Beside him, Laura reacted quickly, and hands that he imagined were removing his shirt now grabbed and pulled him hard against her to break his fall. He stumbled against her and in the next moment convulsed as fierce stabbing pain made him double over, where the wrought-iron fencing spikes had scored him. “Ah!” he gasped.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! You okay?” Laura’s worried features looked down at him. He looked past her as the lager-heads continued their stagger up the sidewalk, bulky shadows under dim street lamps as they hooted and laughed aloud. “Learn t’hold your liquor, old man!” _I should’ve noticed them. I’m worse off than I thought._

“I’m fine,” he lied. “I wasn’t looking.”

“You need a doctor!” He heard her fear in its fringes.

“No.” He shook his head, apparently too hard, and the parked cars that lined the street beside them shifted and spun. “Not till I sort this out.”

“Then at least tell me where we’re going! And why the Inspector’s chasing you!”

He didn’t see a point in answering that. He hadn’t the strength to argue. Instead, he peered about their surroundings and tried to get his bearings. “We’re close. It’s near here somewhere…” He’d spent the past week renewing half-forgotten maps of these streets and alleyways in his search for Kevin Landers. Tonight they’d grown fuzzy in his exhaustion-fogged mind, and it all looked same, these forgotten streets in this forgotten neighborhood, all fronted by the ubiquitous Georgian row houses that miraculously avoid destruction during the wartime bombings. Perhaps even the German bombers had feared venturing too close. The street level held a usual mix of small shops, curry and chip takeaways, and abandoned storefronts that sported faded lettering. All were shuttered apart an occasional ABC that still sold paper-wrapped bottles of gin or high-alcohol lager to any passer-by with a few quid. In the sheltering doorways stood the shadows of prostitutes, shifting from leg to leg against the damp chill and competing for the ABC’s business to provide a transient comfort.

“At least tell me what you’re looking for?” Laura now asked. “I expect the homeless shelters are full by now.”

Off to his left, a distant church bell began to chime, its sound muffled by a mist that brushed and swirled above them. Eleven, he counted. He straightened and tugged in that direction.

“This way.”

“I can’t believe I’m listening to you,” she grumbled. But she also didn’t let go of him.

Street lights here were nearly non-existent. It was a neighborhood where the local council hadn’t yet replaced smashed bulbs. Or didn’t care because it was an exercise in futility. As they shuffled past a shadowed doorways a woman’s voice called, “It’s a hard night, luv, when yer entertain' drunken touts like ‘im!”

He felt Laura tense beneath him. “Let it go, luv,” he murmured, unconsciously mimicking the street slang. “She’s just cold and weary.”

Laura paused, then, and he stopped as well, almost automatically, and turned to her, puzzled. She was looking at him. _Really_ looking at him, and he hadn’t a clue why. He knew he was a sight. Not exactly her sartorial Mr. Steele. Her face was close to his as she peered up at him and he felt her breath, welcome warmth against the damp. He held his own; its stench from a week of living on these streets made it intolerable even to himself.

She rested a gentle hand against his whisker-stubbed cheek. “You gonna make it?”

He managed a nod.

“You sure?”

“No…”

Worry pinched her features. “I’ll call a taxi.”

A corner of his mouth lifted as he saw the ridiculousness. “No taxis come ‘round here, luv,” he quipped in his best Brixton.

She straightened, then, and shifted her supporting arm beneath his shoulders, where muscles still throbbed from clinging so long to the suspended warehouse rope. “Well, then. In that case, you said it was this way?”

“I think so…” He resumed his half-stagger, and they continued into narrow SoHo streets where tourists never ventured. He focused on putting one foot in front of the other, and told himself to ignore the fire in his abdomen and the growing damp beneath his shirt. If the few passers-by mistook him for a drunk, he was fine with that. Laura’s strength beside him was a talisman. With her at his side, he knew they had a fighting chance.

They continued onward, navigating another corner that looked vaguely familiar and, just as the church, now audibly closer, chimed the quarter hour, he looked up, and stiffened.

He felt Laura’s reaction beside him. “What?” as she turned to follow his gaze.

Across from them on the opposite corner, he finally spotted it. Another row of worn Georgian residences, long ago converted to rentals that over the decades continued a pronged slide down the social scale. No urban gentrification here. The corner building had been a hotel even back to when the King was mad, and a sign suspended over the street from the upper level announced through peeling, faded paint that they’d found _The Georgian Arms_. An anemic lamp over a battered oaken entrance barely held back the night, and the only light from within was a slash of yellow that spilled through the vertical edge of a ground floor window, where a curtain didn’t completely close. Tucked into the window’s near corner was a creased cardboard placard. _Vacancy._

 “You call this a hotel!” She stared up the half-dozen poured steps that defined its entrance.

His mouth twisted. “Depends on one’s urgency. Rooms rent by the hour.”

“Ugh!” She shuddered, and then her wits caught up and her eyes narrowed speculatively. “And you know this place because–?”

He wasn’t certain how much recent history he should share with Laura, seeing as his reception was still uncertain. “I, ah, did some interviews. Several of the women I met with work out of here.”

She snorted. “At least our cover story’s obvious.” He ignored the look that said, _What on earth have you been doing?_ and he instead focused on ascending the steep steps that led to the hotel’s front door, as clear an indication as any that its customers seldom brought luggage.

They tried the door and it didn’t budge. Laura glanced the question and he quipped, “It isn’t the nicest neighborhood.” She pressed the bell and from the other side came a dim echo, and then silence. Laura nudged him, none too gently. “Stand straight. You’re not exactly believable.” He tried, but it hurt too much.

The cold started to seep into his bones as they waited. She rang the bell again and frowned. “It’s awfully late…”

“Not for their clients,” he muttered, and was rewarded moments later by a soft, scuffing sound making its way inside and growing louder.

“Follow my lead,” Laura hissed under her breath, and then the door opened and yellow light spilled across them, nearly blinding him after living in the darkness for so long.

“Who’s you?” demanded a sharp voice, and a stooped woman in her early sixties filled the doorway and stared down at them along a hawk-like beak of a nose. “Watcher want?”

In that instant Laura had transformed herself. She must have pinched her cheeks, for now they were bright as if rouged, the collar of her jacket was turned up, and her blouse sported two more undone buttons than it had just moments before. “'Ere, we need a room for the night.” She spoke in a barely passable slangy accent that offended his soul, part Cockney, part Geordie, and sounding like something cobbled from too much viewing of _Masterpiece Theatre._

He didn’t miss his cue and he staggered a little, feigning drunk. It wasn’t hard, between the throbbing pain in his gut and his fogged brain, and he’d nothing to eat or drink. “Got me girl, I ‘ave. Fix us up, luv. Eh?” He leered at the woman. Gave her a broad wink. “Drunk too much for me car, tonight.”

Birdlike beady eyes narrowed. “Why ain’t she drivin?”

He couldn’t think fast enough to respond; he could barely stay standing. Fortunately, Laura’s wits were still with her and she chirped. “It ain’t me car. Selfish bugger.”

The narrow gaze shifted to Laura. “Don’t recognize you, girl. Professional?”

“New street,” she brassed back. “Vi tipped me off.” Now she tugged on his arm, none too gently. “Come on. He ain’t good for too much longer. An’ me meter’s tickin’.”

The woman glanced from one to the other. Bony fingers twisted in the frayed fabric of her faded house dress. “Ten quid for the hour. Twenty for the night. Cash up front.”

Any other time, he’d chortle at having tricked Laura into posing as a hooker. Now, it was all he could do to fish his wallet from the hip pocket of his jeans. He managed to extract a twenty pound note and it hardly had a chance to dangle before the woman snatched it from his bloodied fingers and it vanished into the depths of her cardigan pocket. She stepped back, money winning over better judgment. “Come on in, then. Though you ain’t gettin’ a full night, by the looks of ‘im.”

Laura grinned. “What’s new? It’s always the girl who does the work, innit?” Steele winced as the woman cackled in agreement. _No, I’m not forgiven yet._

The woman – he never did learn her name – led them up a rickety staircase that would never pass fire inspection. He leaned heavily on the railing and the bannister shifted beneath him, and only Laura’s strong arm around his waist kept him from tumbling back downward. He tuned out the landlady’s steady prattle and kept himself focused on clearing one step at a time. Ten…eleven…twelve… At the top of the landing was a narrow hallway with a threadbare carpet that might have once been patterned in roses. A quartet of paint-chipped doors flanked either side. She ushered them into one of them, opening the door with a flare that mocked the Ritz. It was the furthest room down the hall but there was only silence from the other rooms - apparently business wasn’t booming tonight on the hooker-and-john circuit.

The door opened upon a minimally furnished room, with another threadbare carpet. There was a serviceable metal-frame bed with a dubious coverlet and a tilted dresser that held a chipped ewer and basin. He swayed on his feet while Laura held him upright and tried to wrap up the landlady’s sudden yen for conversation. “…bath’s on the other end of the hall and there’s a pair o’ towels on the dresser there and no bath now till six tomorrow bein’ as it’s so late—”

“Thanks much. Good night,” and Laura shoved the busybody through the door and closed it in her startled face. Steele didn’t bother to wait. He homed for the bed on unsteady feet and collapsed heavily upon the thin coverlet, and his own groan matched that of the ancient mattress springs. He rolled onto his back and let out his breath in a large sigh and, with it, the last remnants of energy drained from him like water from a tub. His shoes were still on and dragged against the thin bedding, but he lacked even the strength to toe them off. _At last. At last._ He closed his eyes and let himself drift and barely noticed Laura as she bustled about the room.

“I’ll be right back,” he thought he heard her say, and there was the sharp click of her heeled pumps against the wood flooring and the rattle of the door knob and then the steps disappeared into the distance. He let himself relax into bedsprings that jabbed against his back, and although it was nothing like the bed at Felicia’s, it felt like the softest down, and his body began to drift and swirl in its eddies as he lost track of time and it was just moments or possibly hours later that the sharp steps returned. He opened his eyes and drank in the sight of her. Laura Holt. Standing before him. After four long months of emptiness in his soul.

When he left LA he never wanted to see her again. Now he couldn’t get enough of her. They were separated for what seemed like forever and he wanted her to look different. He looked for little changes in hair length or maybe the beginnings of a wrinkle, anything to reflect the passage of time and what their long separation might have meant to her, and instead she looked and moved exactly the same as the day he left. She was either unaware of or ignored his scrutiny, but he didn’t care and he drank in her efficient movements as she now deposited a much-heavier porcelain pitcher atop the wobbly dresser. She paused to slide from her linen jacket, with its drop of dried blood on one shoulder, and she hung it carefully over the ladder-back frame of the room’s only chair. The gesture transported him back to the hundred times he’d watched her do the same thing back in L.A., just before she’d sit behind her desk and they’d argue over whodunit and why in their latest murder case. But there was no desk and no case. Instead, she turned back to the dresser and he watched as she poured water from the pitcher into its cracked basin. Took up a washcloth and swirled it in its depths. Pulled it out, gave it a gentle wring to remove the excess water. 

Finally, she glanced over at him and her eyes widened with surprise as she discovered him watching her. She frowned a little. “What?”

Despite his exhaustion and the incessant pain of his injury, he managed a half-smile. Cocked an eyebrow in a pale facsimile of a flirt.

“I missed you.”

The eyes widened. “You _missed_ me?” Hands tightened around the towel in her clasp. “You left me!”

Only then did he realize that she had been silent for a reason. And he’d just handed her the key to finally let it out. “Laura…”

“Just look at you! What the hell do you think you were doing!”

He glanced down at his bloodied shirt and his expression turned rueful. “Trying not to meet the business end of a wrought-iron fence.”

“I mean for the past four months! I find you, only to learn the police after you! What in the hell are you up to?” Four months of hurt and anger poured out, and yet, because she was Laura, even then she continued to work. She dampened the washcloth again. Wrung it out. And now, finally, approached him. “Take off your shirt.”

He raised an eyebrow at that. “Glad to know the romance is still there.” Nonetheless, he tried to comply but his clumsy fingers fumbled with the buttons, and she impatiently brushed his hands away to do it herself. Yet, despite her anger, her touch was gentle, and as she peeled open his torn shirt, she gasped audibly.

“That bad, eh?” He tried to look down to view it, but she pushed him back down against the pillows.

“Bad enough. Lie still!” She began to dab, cleaning the outer margins to better view the mess, and the towel warmed his chilled bare flesh. “If you weren’t such a pitiful wreck, I’d clobber you!”

“Thank heavens for small mercies, eh?”

She swung back to the basin and he caught a glance at the bloodied towel in her hand. The room suddenly spun a little, and he felt a little faint. He closed his eyes and heard the swish of water. “Not a word from you! Not a note! Not a collect call!”

She returned to his side and, before she had a chance to address his wound again, he reached up and grasped her wrist. Held her gaze. “You know why I left.” The silence stretched. He knew why she was so angry. He even understood it. But he knew Laura Holt, and in her pale features he recognized the fear that lurked just beneath her anger. Anger was the shield she used against deeper emotions that she struggled to keep at bay.

Well, he was finished with that. It was time to roll Henri’s dice. He said, “I left because I wanted more. I wanted to explore our relationship. Without the distractions of the agency.”

“That’s a helluva way to show it!” She shot back. “Relationship? What kind of a relationship do we have – or will have – if every time I turn around– bingo! – you’re gone!” She took up the cloth again. “Lift up your shirt.”

He flinched against the rough toweling as she pressed it against the raw edges of his wound. No one would mistake her for Florence Nightingale. “I think I would’ve fared better hanging from that hook.”*

She ignored that. “If you wanted to end our association, why weren’t you man enough to tell me to my face?”*

“Laura, _you’re_ the one who said we needed time apart.”

“So you decided to spend it a continent away?” He tensed as she daubed at the wound with the thin rag of a washcloth. “Sorry,” she murmured. “This is going to hurt.”

“I’m fine…I needed to find something.”

She snorted. “What? A chalice? Gemstones? A painting from Freddie Smith?” He winced at that last jab. _So she_ did _know I was in Australia. Guess I deserve that one._

He looked up from his misery and finally met Laura’s gaze. “Something more valuable than mere tangibles.”

“Like what?”

“Me.”

For the first time since they’d reunited, he finally had her full attention. The hand holding the rag paused, and she glanced up from her work to look at him. The anger was still there in those gold-flecked eyes, and the fear that clung to its edges. But he spied something more, and he struggled to identify it. Uncertainty? Hesitation?...

And then he knew. He saw that look once before. Back when they were strangers and stood in a much finer hotel suite, and he promised her that she could believe in him. She went through a similar struggle then, as he waited…

And then the thread snapped, and she pivoted sharply away. “You were in Los Angeles last time I looked!” She returned to rinse the towel, swishing it so hard that water from the basin sloshed onto the dresser. When she wrung it, it was hard enough to distort the fabric.

But he persisted. She knew damn well what he really meant.  “What’s the major stumbling block between us? Hmm?”

“Your aversion to leg work?”

“My name. My real name. I knew you’ve felt if I couldn’t give you that, I couldn’t be honest about…other things.”

“Other things?” The cloth stopped dabbing. He caught her gaze again. Only this time, the anger faded and didn’t return, and suddenly his Laura was back. He released a breath he hadn’t know he held. She said, “I don’t care what your name is. Make one up. I’ll be just as happy.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed. But he didn’t believe her. Not really. Since the first, she insisted he reveal his ‘real’ identity. The irony, of course, was that she already knew everything about him that was important. But the croupier still hadn’t called the game, so he threw the dice again.

“When it seemed our time together was over, I realized Remington Steele was just another name I’d borrowed.” Now he saw the hurt in her eyes as she understood what he was really saying. But it was too late to go back. No more pretending. “If I was going to have to give it back, then I should have something to replace it with that was truly mine.”

She returned to cleaning his injury, but now her touch was a caress. “And do you?” she asked.

He chuckled. Laughing over the pain. Or maybe because of it.

“Well, that’s the great bloody joke of it. I found a name. And you’ll never guess what it might bloody well be.”

[To be continued...]

 

[* Author’s note:  These dialogue lines are in the script, but didn’t appear in the televised episode. I’ve taken liberties to rearrange other dialogue as well.]


	9. Part 1 – Steele in the Dark

Laura quietly closed the door behind her and, after a moment’s thought, turned the key in its lock and pocketed it. She didn’t need nosy hotel managers finding out that the tenant in room six was a fugitive. Fugitive from what, she still had to determine, since Mr. Steele wasn’t exactly forthcoming on that topic. In fact, he wasn’t forthcoming about anything from these past months except for that pocket watch. _That damned watch that seems to bring you nothing but trouble._ She snorted softly as she descended the worn, creaky stairs. _Only you, Mr. Steele, could turn a search for your father into a case that would roil the British crown_.

As she came around the post at the base of the stairs, she paused and glanced back upward. _And what about me, Mr. Steele?_ _Looks like you’ve created a new life for yourself in these months you’ve been gone. I haven’t a clue whether there’s a place for me in_ _it. Some detective I am._

The weathered hotel desk where they had registered was now abandoned and no one stood watch, but through a side doorway behind it Laura saw the flickering blue-white light from a television screen, and heard the soft sound of audience laughter. She circled around its wooden bulk and peeked through the open door. It led to what had once been a front parlor, and in its center rested an enormous, overstuffed armchair decorated in a faded brocade. The beak-nosed manager was settled within its depths, her slipper-clad feet propped on a matching footstool. An ancient black-and-white television stood opposite against a wall, and surrounding both chair and television was a clutter of small tables and plant stands, carpeted with tatted doilies and antimacassars and supporting a sea of ceramic tchotchkes and half-dead greenery that looked to date back to when Victoria sat on the throne.

Laura rapped lightly against the chipped, cream-painted door frame. “’Scuse me, ma’am,” she began in a Cockney replay dredged from _Mary Poppins_ , and the woman leapt in her chair, hand pressed against the stained front of her beige wooly cardigan.

“Oh! Yer gave me a fair fright, luv! Whatta yer want?”

 “Me Tom needs a bit o’ help.” She gave a big, sisterly wink. “Yer know what I mean. Is there a pharmacy nearby?” The woman looked blank. “Um, a drug store?”

Knowledge dawned. “A chemist, you mean?” Laura had no idea, but nodded in agreement. “There’s an all-nighter three blocks up. On the Shaftsbury Road.”

“Thanks.” She gave a thank-you smile and as she turned to leave, the manager’s voice followed her. “’Ope he’s still here when yer get back! An’ that he paid in advance!”

 _Me, too!_ Laura agreed silently. _His track record for staying put these days isn’t exactly stellar. What in the hell has he been up to?_

She trotted down the hotel’s steps, paused to get her bearings, and then strode briskly up the dark Soho street, opposite the direction from which they had arrived. Her handbag was pressed tightly against her body, and the business end of her hotel room key protruded from between the fingers of her left fist as an impromptu brass knuckle. It was nearing midnight and yet the street was busier now than when they had arrived. Cars slowly moved up the street, driver’s window open as its passengers eyed the prostitutes who lingered in the doorways. They all ignored her, and yet, oddly, their presence made her feel safer. She’d been a private investigator for a long time; she understood tough streets, even if she hadn’t lived in one.

She had told Steele she was off to find medical help, and while it wasn’t exactly a lie, it was a generous half-truth. Fortunately, he was too exhausted to catch on. The truth was that she needed to get away and sort through her confused emotions. During those long, lonely months of his absence, while she struggled to keep body and soul together, she consoled herself by imagining a hundred different scenarios for their reunion. A good number involved passionate kissing, followed by toe-curling, tooth-rattling sex. _I never expected to find you badly injured and clinging to a warehouse hoist like a bizarre circus acrobat._ In those first shocked moments as their gazes met, her months of anger vaporized like fog under a morning sun, and she could only think about his distress and how to get him to safety. And then she saw his stunned expression as she called to Lombard, and his assumption that she was about to betray him. _I couldn’t do that to you. Are we so far gone that you believe I could do that?_ His hesitation was fleeting, but it still stung her deeply. _I suppose it’s my own damn fault. That you don’t know if you can trust me. I don’t know how to make it right with you. How to put us back together._ And so she did what she always did when her heart was in danger of breaking. She got angry. She let the months of fear and anxiety come roaring back, and it was only by clutching that washrag and trying to clean him up that she kept herself from strangling him. Or kissing him madly through the grime.

_And then you had to go and change the rules, damn you._

He was reclined against the bed’s wrought-iron frame and she could see the exhaustion that fogged those normally alert blue eyes. “I realized if I was going to have to give back the name Remington Steele, then I should have something to replace it with that was truly mine.”

 _Give back my name_ …His words were a knife to her heart. _When was it I assumed that you would always be my Remington Steele? That no one but you could answer to his name?_

Her hand froze in the act of wiping away the dried blood, and her pulse began to race. “And…do you?” she managed to ask. “Do you have a name?”

He surprised her with a chuckle. “Well, that’s the great bloody joke of it. I found a name. And you’ll never guess who the bloke is supposed to be.”

 “I thought,” she said, when she thought she could trust herself to be dispassionate, “you didn’t know who your father was.”

He shifted, then, and released a grunt of pain. Before she should stop him, he’d fished from the pocket of his filthy trousers an object. It took her a moment to recognize it. And when she did, another piece of the puzzle dropped into place. _His visit to Dublin._ She glanced from it to him. “That’s the watch that was sent to you last year? The one that took you to Ireland?” _Without me. And then you lost your memory and I had to come rescue you._ She was surprised at the need to suddenly blink. _Is this what I drove you to? Risking your life to discover your real name?_

But he wasn’t reading her emotional roller-coaster, and his attention was still focused on the watch. With a practiced gesture he flicked open its silver filigree case, and a familiar tune tinkled forth. _When Irish Eyes Are Smiling._ He said, “It was my one good lead. To S.J. from K.L.”

She frowned, then. “But it wasn’t much of a lead. The man who sent it to you died.”

He shrugged. “It was still a lead. You taught me that.” She hoped he didn’t notice her wince. “I returned to that village. Asked a lot of questions. And I finally came up with a name to match those initials. Kevin Landers.”

“You think K.L. is Kevin Landers?” She carefully stilled her expression as her own words came back to haunt her, spoken just several hours ago and several blocks away. She had stood beside Lombard near the pub where a woman had brutally met her death. In one hand she held the slim gold cigarette lighter that she’d accidentally stepped on at the crime scene. “ _The family crest of the Earl of Claridge, tenth in line to the throne of England. And possible mass murderer.”_

_I’m so sorry, Mr. Steele…_

He continued, “The name led me to London. He was English, actually. Traveled to Dublin regularly.”

“Businessman?” she asked, playing the innocent.

His face darkened. _Oh, no. He knows._ “Prostitutes. Apparently he liked his sex rough.”

She tried to pretend this was news to her. “Oh!” Then tried for misdirection. “Lots of people have the initials K.L. This happened over thirty years ago. K.L. could be anyone.”

 “Not just anyone. You see, Kevin Landers isn’t the man’s real name. Are you ready for this? He’s the Earl of Claridge.” And now he grinned and his smile was almost luminescent against those handsome, sooty features and the dark stubble of whisker. “Wouldn’t that be a corker? If it turned out I was related to royalty? After spending half my life living in places like this?”

“Sounds like weak evidence to me,” she countered. She returned to the dresser. Rinsed the towel one last time. The water in the chipped porcelain bowl was pink, and it scared her.

He was speaking again. “Ironic, isn’t it? I’ve always been afraid to look too deeply into my past. And when I finally do?” He made an open-handed gesture.

_You’re right. You shouldn’t have looked too deeply. And now it’s too late…_

“What?” he asked, and she realized her turmoil had betrayed her. “What’s wrong, Laura?”

She set down the badly stained towel and turned to face him. “I’m worried,” she said. It was a half-truth. “About you. You need a doctor.”

“Laura, there are no doctors this time of night. And none make house visits to Soho.”

She rose and reached for her jacket. “Maybe I can find a pharmacy. At least find some antibiotics. Or bandages.”

His brow furrowed. “Laura. You can’t go out there. It’s dangerous. The people who live here aren’t the nicest to know.”

“I can take care of myself. There’s a busy street just a few blocks up.” She slid into her jacket and tucked her handbag underneath. “Besides, if you don’t survive the night, you’ll never know if the Earl’s really your father. Or Kevin Landers.”

He scowled at her. He always scowled when she was right. She stepped forward and dropped a light kiss on his forehead. His arm reached up to clasp hers, and she didn’t resist as he pulled her close. He smelled of sweat and unwashed teeth and machine oil. He smelled like heaven.

 “Thank you,” he murmured. Blue eyes held her gaze.

“Well,” she said, matching his soft tone, “It’d be a shame to travel six thousand miles just to fly your sorry corpse back to L.A.”

“I haven’t shown my gratitude yet for rescuing me.”

Now she finally managed a small smile for him. “I’d love for you to do that,” she promised. And then wrinkled her nose. “After you’ve washed up. You’re not exactly the Remington Steele I left behind.”

“No. I’d like to think I’m something more, perhaps…” And he touched the gentlest of kisses against her lips. A butterfly kiss, her father used to call it, and the unexpected memory surprised her. She gently kissed him back. Pressed a warm hand against the sharp bristle of his cheek and brushed another kiss before straightening.

“I’ll be right back. Close your eyes. Try to rest. Don’t answer the door.”

His face twisted. “I couldn’t fall out of this bed, the way I feel.”

That look he gave her continued to warm her as she headed toward the bustle of late-night Shaftsbury Avenue and the chemist’s shop. She walked briskly and soon reached the church from which they had earlier heard the sound of clock chimes. It was a modest structure, not a fancy London church like St. Paul’s. A neighborhood church, small and comfortable. Its single lean spire dissolved into the dense grey fog, and the limestone façade of its stonework was an anachronistic contrast to the surrounding empty shop fronts and rented rooms that catered to the desperate. Her steps slowed as she took it in. _Maybe that’s why the church is here,_ she thought. _Because this is where it’s needed most._ She was surprised to see that, despite the lateness of the hour, its narrow windows were lit from within and the light cast irregular red, blue, and green reflections against the line of parked cars that stretched along the curbside.

_Nice to see that someone’s trying to offer hope around here. I could use a little of that hope, myself._

Even as she finished the thought, she heard the soft clank of a metal latch, and she paused and turned to see the church’s side door open. A single yellow lamp over the door illuminated what had to be a prostitute as she emerged from within. The woman’s hips were poorly concealed by a tight leather skirt that barely covered her crotch and her torso was wrapped in the thick pile of a fake fur jacket. A mass of blonde hair was piled atop her narrow features and the overall impression was one of imbalance, magnified as she clung to the railing with one hand and attempted to descend the stone steps while perched on impossibly high stiletto shoes. Once she reached the pavement, she made a bee-line back up the street in the direction Laura had just come, teetering past Laura with barely a glance.

Laura continued to watch her progress for a few moments as the woman headed for the parade of slowly moving cars. One of them pulled alongside the curb and the woman angled over and leaned against its open window, a gesture that lengthened the view of her long legs and exposed her thin derriere. Laura frowned. There was nothing she could to prevent the transaction, and the thought depressed her a little. She glanced back at the church and its side entrance with the gleaming lamp that shone into a hopeless street. As she looked, she suddenly pieced together what was going on. _Ta, luv. I think you’ve just done Mr. Steele a huge favor._

She turned back and hurried up the same steps that the hooker had just descended. The ancient wood door was stiff and heavy and its brass handle was icy in her hands, but with the hope that now unfurled in her heart, it was no effort at all.

[To be continued...]


	10. Part 1 – Steele in the Dark

The cheap door of their shabby lodging room closed behind Laura’s departure and moments later he heard the soft snick that told him she’d locked the door. She hadn’t done it to lock him in – they both knew that. Even in his exhausted state, he could pick that lock, as he’d heard an experienced old gent once describe it, wearing boxing gloves and using a stick of spaghetti. No, she’d done it to discourage intruders and busybodies. And perhaps, more generously, to let him sleep and mend undisturbed. For the first time since leaving LA he felt really and truly at peace, and he knew it was because he had Laura at his side, protecting him from what may come. He sighed deeply, with a relief that came straight from his marrow, and relaxed back into the first clean pillow – well, fairly clean –he’d had in a week. He was too exhausted to martial his thoughts and, eyes closed, he let them flow wherever the current drifted.

_Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she has to walk into mine..._

How in the hell did she do it? In the entire metropolis of London lived millions of people in countless districts and suburbs, and still she tracked him to his personal gin joint. The answer was obvious to anyone who had seen _Jane Eyre_. _You and I are connected by an invisible thread._ _Orson Welles to Joan Fontaine. MGM 1941._

Or the answer might be from _Bell, Book, and Candle_? _(Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak, 1958.)_ He’d occasionally thought Laura’s deductive reasoning bordered on the supernatural. She even had a little black cat. _I wonder if it answers to Pywacket?_

Well, whatever movie it was, it didn’t really matter. The bottom line was he had gambled and it paid off. Laura was with him again. How it would be between them going forward, he still did not know. What he did know was that he was luckier than he’d any hope to be, and certainly more than he deserved.

_Thank you, Henri. I shan’t forget this._

_The question is, how do I want it to be?_

Henri had asked him the same question as they sat on his patio under the Mediterranean sun.

_Do you love her?_

_I don’t know what love is,_ he had replied.

He now understood that answer to Henri's question belonged instead to Douglas Quintain. And to Paul Fabrini.  Richard Blaine. Michael O’Leary.

It wasn’t Mr. Steele’s answer.

A corner of his mouth lifted, and he snorted softly. _You lot don’t know what love is,_ he told them. _None of you ever knew. Real love is what Rick felt when Ilsa reappeared in his cafe. When Laura spotted me in that darkened alleyway. A joy so strong it nearly jolted me from that pulley._

But Douglas and Richard and Paul weren’t finished with him. _You call that love? What sort of lover turns you in to the police? You doubted, mate. You doubted her. Just for a moment._

Hot shame flushed through him, and he shifted uneasily against the thin mattress. _I did doubt. For a moment. What does that say about us, Laura? Are we too far apart? Too far gone?_

_I couldn’t bear that, Laura._

_I couldn’t bear losing you. Not now. Not after finding you again._

Suddenly, his need to make love with her was overwhelming. Physical and mental exhaustion no longer held it back. He needed to make love with her in this bed. In his bed back home. In hers. On the office desk. Before his fireplace. He needed to renew his acquaintance with the graceful curve of her bared neck. Explore what lay beneath those sexy teddies she wore under her suits. He wanted to make passionate love with her like he never had with anyone before.

And as he closed his eyes and imagined, he realized that he wanted even more. He wanted to hold her close… bury himself in the floral scent of her hair…fall asleep in her arms…

He finally slept.

***

Even in the deepest sleep, noticing irregularities was part of his DNA. He was vaguely aware of movements in the thin-walled building that had somehow survived the war bombings. There was the distant sound of people moving along the shabby, carpeted corridor. Soft voices. Stopped at his door. Not moving on.

In an instant he was alert. He rolled off the thin mattress and was moving toward the window and the fire escape. Or he should have been. Instead, the dull throb in his solar plexus flared into angry life and sent him stumbling against the iron bedstead with a cry of agony.

An unfamiliar male voice. Fumbling sounds at the door lock. He picked himself up, ungraceful, using the bed’s metal frame for support. Tried to clamber to his unreliable feet.

Then another voice. Laura’s. _Thank god._

“What are you doing here!”

He looked up at her from his sprawled position, half on the bed, half on the threadbare carpet. “Haven’t we overused that line by now?”

Then he registered that standing beside her was an older gentleman in a dark mackintosh and holding a leather case. “Good lord!” the visitor expostulated.

“That bad, eh?” Steele asked as he looked up from the filthy, frayed carpet.

Laura swore and ran to his side. Reached a strong arm beneath him. “You were supposed to stay in bed! Can’t you stay put just for once?”

“Sorry,” he gasped. “Old habits die hard,” He winced as Laura and the stranger practically lifted him back onto the bed.

“It’ll be a dying habit if you don’t let me help you!” she snapped. “I leave you alone for an hour and look at you!”

The stranger had folded his coat on a chair and now leaned over Steele. “I’m a physician. I’m going to pull away these towels and look at your injury.” His touch was gentle as he lifted away the hand towel that was Laura’s improvised bandaging. His breath drew in with a hiss at the seeping blood and angry flesh that surrounded the wounds. “Bloody hell!”

“Right,” gasped Steele, “on both counts.”

“How long ago did this happen?”

“Earlier this afternoon. There’s an iron railing in Kensington that took a dislike to me.”

“Filthy things. Heaven knows how many years of pigeon droppings are now inside you. You need to be admitted to casualty.”

“No! Too dangerous!” His sudden upright gesture drew another grunt in pain.

The man turned to Laura. “Please explain to your semi-conscious friend how dangerous sepsis is?”

Steele tensed and met Laura’s gaze, eloquent with unspoken communication.  _Please_ , _not until we solve this. Trust me, Laura._

After a long moment, she turned back to their visitor. “I agree with you, Doctor. Unfortunately, my friend is right.” Steele could see the courage it took for her to admit that. He fell back against the pillow, releasing a fear that he didn’t know he had. _She’s still on my side. I’m not going to die. Not now. Not now that Laura’s here with me._

She continued, “The wrong people are looking for him. Going to an emergency room would be too exposed. I promise you we’ll go to a hospital as soon as we can.”

“Hmph,” said the physician, clearly unhappy. Then he offered a thick hand to Steele. “Name’s Shapiro, by the way.”

“Johnny Todd.” He was grateful that Laura had the intuition to let him pick his cover.

“Well, Johnny, this is going to hurt rather a lot. These wounds need to be cleaned. And since I don’t have access to my proper instruments or anaesthetics, this will hurt rather more than it would in my surgery.”

“Just do it, Shapiro,” said Steele tersely. “And thanks.”

“What do you need?” Laura asked the doctor. “Can I get you anything?”

“I brought enough materials, I expect; your description was accurate. To a point where I’d wonder if you’d done this before?” Laura’s expression remained blandly innocent. “In which instance, I suggest you do your best to distract your friend while I work.”

“I can think of a distraction,” said Steele. He waggled an eyebrow at Laura.

She managed a slight smile. He realized it was the first time he’d seen her smile since she’d found him. It felt like heaven. “Do you never stop?” she asked.

“Never. Not with the most beautiful woman in the room.” Then he gasped and cried aloud as Shapiro applied a healthy splash of peroxide to the open wounds. Laura’s face paled with sympathy; she was feeling everything he was. “Go wait elsewhere,” he said through gritted teeth.

“And have you run out again? Not a chance, buster.”

“Can’t hurt to try—Ah!” Another healthy splash.

She reached out and clasped his hand, and he gripped it back tightly. “I’m here.”

“I know. And amazed. How?”

“Mr. Blaine left pretty clear directions. As did Mr. Fabrini. And the Messers. Morrell and Quintain.” She considered him with a look that left him defenseless. “A detective would think that perhaps they wanted to be found.”

“A detective might be right,” he agreed and held her gaze.

Shapiro had returned to rummage through his leather bag. Laura started to move away as well, but Steele grabbed at her arm and pulled her back to his bedside. “How in the hell did you find a doctor? You’re in a strange city that you’ve never before visited and you locate a physician who makes house calls after midnight!”

She gave a little shrug. “I’m a detective, remember?”

“You’re bloody brilliant!” And he pulled her into long and vigorous kiss. Which, he was quick to notice, she didn’t protest. Quite the opposite, in fact, as her hands came up to rest on his shoulders. This was promising. Particularly since his last bath and change of clothing had been…well, best don’t go there.

There was a round of throat clearing from the foot of the bed. “I charge by the quarter hour,” Shapiro said dryly.

Reluctantly, Steele let her go. But he kept his gaze firmly fixed on Laura. She wasn’t getting away that easily. Not anymore.

Shapiro returned to Steele’s side with another brown bottle in one hand and paper-wrapped gauze pads in the other. “This is going to hurt almost as much. Since I can’t use my nice NHS medicines, it’s needs must with the local Boots,” he said, mentioning the chain of chemists’ shops.

“How about another distraction? That last one worked pretty well.”

“I don’t think the good doctor’s interested in a _menage a trois_ ,” she said dryly, but relented a bit. “I’ll hold your hand again.”

“Then tell me how you found our good Doctor.”

“Our landlady directed me up the street to the chemist’s shop. On the way I discovered that the local church houses a night clinic. Dr. Shapiro provides medical care for street people.”

“And your young lady—” and here Shapiro pressed an iodine-soaked bandage against the open wound. Steele gasped and clenched Laura’s hand tightly. “You’re okay,” she said gently. She reached up and brushed a lock of filthy hair away from his forehead. Light fingers traced the line across his brow. Bliss.

“—Your young lady,” he continued, “Found me working with a roomful of prostitutes, dispensing antibiotics, the Pill, and condoms. She chatted up the old girls till I finished and then convinced me to pop around and look at her dear, badly injured friend. As she said, I run the clinic just up the road…One more round, Johnny.” This one didn’t hurt quite as badly. Or maybe his nerves were finally dulled. “Your friend tells a very convincing story.”

“On Judgment Day,” Steele quipped, “the Lord God himself will discover the holes in His plans once Laura arrives.”

“Thank goodness for that. This world could stand improvement. You’ve a mild fever and we appear to have caught this just before it wants to go septic. You’re damned lucky you didn’t perforate any organs.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks?” Laura asked, not bothering to hide her anxiety.

“Bad enough. I want him on bed rest so that the wounds have a chance to clot and close. That’s probably what saved you, lad, letting it bleed.”

He couldn’t resist. “Bed rest, eh?”

“Heavy on the rest, Johnny,” said Laura severely.

Initial needs met, Steele’s fogged brain started to catch up with something that Shapiro had said earlier about where Laura had tracked him down. _A clinic for the homeless nearby? This sounds familiar..._ Like a character from Alice in Wonderland, he circled to the last conversation but one. “Near here? Martha’s Clinic?” he asked the physician.

Shapiro gave him a sharp look. “Not anymore. Lighthouse. We replaced them. That was a long time ago, Mr. Todd.”

“Ah. Dr. Klingman was a good woman,” he said, suddenly remembering the diminutive, grey-haired woman who ran the medical clinic with the energy of ten.

“Yes, she was. And you are an interesting puzzle. You look and smell like the lads who live rough, but have the teeth and talk of a toff. But I’ve yet to meet a toff who knew Martha Klingman and her clinic, and even fewer who would care.”

“Let’s just say I’m a man of experience.”

Laura added sweetly, “Mr. Todd is a mystery to us all, some days.” Steele winced, and it wasn’t from the iodine. _So I’m not forgiven yet._

“It’s a pity Dr. Klingman is no longer with us,” said Shapiro with an insight that surprised Steele. “She took great satisfaction in knowing how her visitors ended up.”

“I’m sure she’s smiling somewhere,” Steele agreed, fully aware of Laura’s thoughtful expression as she listened.

Shapiro applied fresh adhesive gauze to the injury site that he then wrapped securely. “I’m sorry. With all that hair these will hurt to remove. You might want to shave your abdomen for a week or two.” Then he wrote for a minute before handing Laura several pages torn from his note pad.

“These are prescriptions for antibiotics, a sleeping draught, and an analgesic. I’m going to guess that Johnny here doesn’t have a substance abuse problem like some of his mates, so I’m suggesting a decent opiate. There’s a Boot’s pharmacy at the top of the street on Shaftsbury and I recommend filling it there. But please don’t go yourself, Miss Lord. At this time of night, send some else.”

Laura’s own use of a pseudonym brought a smile to Steele’s features. Nice to see they were still mentally joined at the hip. Or somewhere. His brain didn’t seem to be working well.

In fact, he was starting to fade out again from exhaustion. He managed to pull himself together long enough to resurrect Mr. Steele and offered his hand.

“Thanks so much, Dr. Shapiro. And especially for your confidence.”

“Thank your young American lady. She’s remarkable.”

“I’m very much aware of how remarkable she is,” Steele said quietly, and he saw Laura blush.

 ***

Laura left with Shapiro to see him out, again locking the door behind her. There was no chance of finding someone else to run the doctor’s errand, so she ignored Shapiro’s advice and visited the all-night pharmacy herself, returning half an hour later with the prescribed materials. She quietly announced herself before unlocking the door, anxious not to repeat his falling out of bed. “It’s me.”

She needn’t have bothered. He was fast asleep. His familiar beard-stubbled face was relaxed, the pain lines smoothed away. It was the sleep of exhaustion, and she wondered if he had looked this way when he was a young boy. Or after making love. She pressed a hand against her mouth, moved by the sight of him and surprised at the strength of her own reaction.

“You’re safe, now,” she whispered to him. “I found you. I’m not losing you again. I promise.”

She considered him for a long moment, then removed her own jacket and stepped out of her slacks. Her pajamas and gown were back at her hotel, but she’d be damned before she left him alone for something so trivial. She switched off the overhead light and joined him on the other side of the bed, fluffing the pillow so that she could sit a little upright. She took his quiet cool hand into her own and continued to watch him, soothed by the quiet rise and fall of his breathing, until sleep overtook her as well.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An early version of this chapter was first published at Nancy Eddy's fine website, "The Casebook of Mr. and Mrs. Steele".
> 
> * The ‘old gent’ mentioned at the beginning of this chapter is Blindfold Bill from Dorothy L. Sayers novel Strong Poison. Young Harry met him in London, long ago. You’ve never met Lord Peter Wimsey? Or read Strong Poison? Hie thee to a bookstore! And enjoy!


	11. Part 1 – Steele in the Dark

**London**

Laura awoke in a fog of disorientation, lying in a strange bed in an unfamiliar room. The early morning light that filtered through ineffectual curtains were the clearest indication that this wasn’t her hotel room and certainly not her loft. She pushed herself into a sitting position and discovered she wore her day clothes, or at least her blouse, panties, and hosiery. _What the hell?_ She shoved her tousled hair from her face and in mid-gesture caught sight of the bloody washcloth and bandages left piled atop a battered chest.

“Mr. Steele!” Memory flooded back and jerked her from her bed. Because he wasn’t in the bed with her. Or in the room. And he certainly wasn’t hiding behind the paucity of furnishings.

“Damn!” She flung the thin blanket into the empty space beside her, grabbed the slacks and jacket she’d left neatly folded on the room’s only chair and hastily dressed. “I don’t believe it! I travel six thousand miles and bust my ass to find him and, as soon as my back is turned, he disappears again! That ungrateful son-of-a—”

“Earl?” said his familiar voice. She looked up from fastening her waistband and found him standing in the doorway, shirtless, with a hand on the doorknob and a threadbare towel draped around his neck. The enormous bandage was wet and had loosened, and it flapped like a white flag against his reddened abdomen.

“Where have you been?” she snapped as her fear found release in anger.

“Using the W.C., actually.” She could hear his exhaustion and she immediately felt guilty. “Ten quid a night doesn’t come with facilities _en suite_.” Moving carefully and with small shuffling steps, he continued into the room and closed the door behind him.

“How are you feeling?” It was a stupid question. He still looked like hell. But he’d made the effort to wash away some of the grime. His hair was wet and it stuck out in all directions, and the effect was unexpectedly endearing.

“Like someone drove a spike into my side.”

“You’ve improved. At least I didn’t smell you coming.” She took the wet linens from his hands and spread them onto the bed’s footboard in what was probably a futile attempt to help them dry. He’d obviously tried to wash the worst of the grime from his shirt and undershirt and – whoops! – his undershorts as well. She felt herself flame hot with mortification. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I’ll just—”

He reached a hand to arrest hers. “Leave it. We’ve both seen worse.” He slowly shuffled to the bed and fell onto it with a small grunt. “I’m afraid I ruined the bandages in that miserable excuse for a shower.”

“Dr. Shapiro left us clean ones,” she said and picked up the bowl and washcloth. “I’ll be right back.” She pointed a finger at him. “Don’t move.”

“Not possible,” he muttered.

She had the bathroom to herself as the hotel didn’t book the type of guests who were active in the early morning. She combined her morning ablutions with landing a bowl of tepid water and returned within minutes. She found him stretched across the bed, his eyes closed and a bare arm cast across his face.

She gently set the bowl atop the chest and paused to look at him. She hadn’t seen him for several months. She thought he’d look different, somehow, but the handsome planes of his face were exactly the same, softened by the stubbled growth of beard, and the same beloved man beneath.

Or was he the same? The little frown appeared on her forehead. He was thinner, yes. Tired. Injured. But there was something else. She couldn’t quite put her finger on the difference. Reticent? Aloof? She’d have to puzzle it out.

She said, briskly, “Ready for your bandage change? I picked up a safety razor last night, if you want to shave first.”

He roused, eyes half-lidded, and rubbed at the dark beard stubble. Truth be told, she rather liked the beard. She chuckled. “I meant your wonderful hairy chest. All that adhesive tape?”

Now he winced and blue eyes fixed accusingly on her. “You’re enjoying this.”

“Not my call. What’s your preference? Tear it off all at once? Or slowly and methodically?”

“I prefer to get my punishment over with,” was his answer, and Laura thought he wasn’t talking about the bandages. She came to the bedside, fully aware that his was a damned attractive chest. And that she’d love nothing more than to run her fingers through that thick curly hair. _Down, girl._

“You ready for this?” and saw the answering awareness to her response in his steady gaze. She reached over the bed…

…and tickled him just beneath the arms. He writhed and gasped. “Laura! What the hell!” and in that next instant she grabbed at the adhesive and jerked it away. This elicited a second yelp as a considerable quantity of hair was lost with the tape. “Bloody hell, Laura!” Which she ignored as she tossed the damp, stained fabric into the waste can.

She held up the razor. “I can shave it, too, but perhaps we’d better not go there.”

He fell back against his pillow and groaned. “No one could possibly mistake your bedside manner for romance.”

“I’m trying to keep you from dying from your own stupidity.” She wetted the washcloth and gently cleansed around the wound’s edges. “It looks a lot better than it did last night. Not as angry. It’s not bleeding and the swelling’s less. Guess we won’t have to put you down. At least, not yet.” She cleaned the area again as Dr. Shapiro had showed her last night. “I’m sorry,” she murmured as Steele flinched against the antiseptic solution where it contacted the wound.

“It’s only what I deserved,” he muttered. “Unbelievably stupid, I was.”

“Why? What happened?”

His lips twisted with distaste. “In a word, Felicia.”

“Felicia,” echoed Laura, and the distaste in her mouth was equal to his. And for very different reasons. Having been explicitly pushed away, he went in pursuit of his one-time lover. Well, it wasn’t like she could blame him for it. She set down the bottle of iodine, not quite ready to trust herself. What she really wanted to do was dump the bottle’s contents over his head.

She said, carefully, “I suppose I can’t fault that. I gather your escapade didn’t proceed as planned?”

“There wasn’t an escapade,” he ground out. “I tried for a kip at her flat, since my room’s been under the constabulary’s eye for a week. Hence my state of ripeness. Apparently my company was too much for her, too. She called the police on me.”

“That’s rich, Felicia calling the police. Any idea why? She didn’t like the split on your last take?”

“Laura, I haven’t seen Felicia since the Five Nudes three years ago. I didn’t even know she was in London till someone tipped me.” Then he paused and he frowned a little. “But you’re right. Why would Felicia have a hot line to the police?”

“More to the point? How would Felicia know the police are looking for you?”

He sighed. “I told her. God, I was phenomenally stupid.”

“So why do the police want you? Aborted attempt at the Crown Jewels?”

He managed a lopsided grin. “Not for want of trying. Daniel and I never did figure a way in there. The ravens came into it at one point.”

Laura blinked. “Ravens? What ravens?” Then she frowned, catching on. “You’re distracting me. Why does Scotland Yard want you?”

He gave a long sigh and fell back against the pillows. “God knows. I don’t know what I’ve done – or what I know – that could interest them. I haven’t done anything except look for the owner of that watch. And yet I seem to be the most popular man in London, apart from that Ripper bloke.”

At that, Laura fell silent. She couldn’t tell him that the man he thought might be his long-lost father might very well be that Ripper bloke. And that Scotland Yard thought the American detective’s interest in said Earl was more than curious.

“The rozzers – I mean, the police –chased me from Felicia’s flat in Kensington. That’s when I landed on the spikes.” He ran his hands through his hair. Scrubbed at his face. “Must be getting old.”

She didn’t miss his descent into street slang. “Well, then, who did the rozzers think they were chasing? Remington Steele?” She knew already that Chief Inspector Lombard sought Remington Steele. Right now, she wanted to hear his side, whether it was real or the story he made up for her. Either way, he wasn’t getting a get-out-of-jail-card free for disappearing all this time.

“Laura, with all my heart, I’ve tried to keep your Remington Steele out of this. Otherwise, why would I have restored the agency’s license to you?”

She started to answer, but the words died on her lips as her gaze locked with his and she suddenly found that she couldn’t look away from the intensity in those blue eyes that saw right through her defenses and into her heart. She remembered her astonishment as she emptied the envelope’s contents onto her desk and found the restored license, and the last of her anger dissolved away. “I haven’t thanked you for that, yet,” she said softly. “So, thank you. More than anything.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied simply, but there was an easing in his own carriage as well. She realized he had been as uncertain as she on where things stood between them. Paradoxically, his uncertainty fueled her own confidence, and she relented with a sigh.

“I believe you. I only meant that, the sooner we figure out why Scotland Yard’s so interested in you, the sooner we can get you to proper medical attention.”

“We?"

 _Good. He was paying attention._ “Me and Mildred.”

The mention of Mildred lightened his expression. There was a connection between those two that Laura still didn’t quite understand. But what he said was, “No. Best stay here. That landlady is a right piece of work, but she dislikes coppers even more than she dislikes her clientele. I’ll be safe here.” _Good call_ , she thought, _since Lombard probably still has a man staking out my hotel._

She sighed and rose. “Look, as soon as the shops open, I’ll step out and bring you food and drink. Clean clothes. I don’t know how much of Dr. Shapiro’s visit you remember from last night, but he didn’t want you moving around yet.”

He caught her hand, but it was his lavulite-tinted gaze that held her. “I remember enough. And I don’t believe I thanked you properly.”

Despite herself and her better judgment, she leaned forward and brushed a light kiss against his lips. “You did thank me. And I’d welcome a better job of it after you’ve cleaned up properly.”

He fell back against his pillow with a sigh. “Can’t say as I blame you. Even I can’t stand myself right now.”

Laura patted his hand and returned to ministering his wound.

 

[to be continued]

 


	12. Part 1 – Steele in the Dark

It took a good half-hour of heated debate, but Steele finally acquiesced to Laura’s suggestion – mostly because his diminished lung capacity was less than Laura’s – that he stay put while Laura paid a visit to the Earl of Claridge. His expression was mulish as she pointed out that he was in no condition to leave his filthy little bedsit, let alone meet an Earl and the man who just might possibly be his biological father. He gave way only when she finally agreed that she would simply show the watch to the Earl, and if he recognized it, then Laura would sound him out about a potential visit from Steele, even assuming a man of Claridge’s standing was willing to meet a prospective bastard son.

What she told Steele, of course, was a lie, because she was motivated by a different sort of kindness. He was still unaware that the Earl was the prime suspect for those brutal SoHo murders. She knew how he’d react when he discovered he was the bastard son of one of London’s most notorious murderers. The discovery would shatter him, in the same way that his shattered illusions about Anna Simpson had embittered him. Laura knew chapter and verse about the fantasies one could weave around an absent father. While her Mr. Steele was above all a realist, he also had a deep romantic streak and Laura wanted to spare him that grief if Inspector Lombard’s suspicions turned out to be true. So she was the person who had to resolve the identity of the London Ripper. Because if the Ripper was the Earl of Claridge, then Laura’s next job was to make sure that the Earl could never be Steele’s father, regardless where the truth really lay.

Not for the agency’s sake, although they might lose a few clients at the news. Not for her sake or for Mildred’s. It was solely for his sake.

And that was the moment when Laura finally admitted to herself that she was well and truly in love with this amazing, infuriating, and complex man.

Ultimately, her fears for Mr. Steele were unfounded and, during her late night stake-out and pursuit of an anachronistic Hansom cab through London streets, she and Steele unmasked the Ripper, who was none other than Bradford Galt, the Earl’s future brother-in-law. Apart from Steele’s momentary pique that Laura had kept Scotland Yard’s suspicions from him, Laura thought the resolution was quite satisfactory.

Satisfactory, that is, except for one minor problem that she still needed to think her way through.

Well, perhaps not so minor as all that.

Galt had been handcuffed and led away, Laura was briefly treated for what was just a glancing blow from Galt, and now she and Steele were seated together in the warmth of one of the police panda vehicles that now cluttered the narrow street outside Katherine Galt’s home. They’d given the police their statements, repeated their story to another, and now sat side-by-side in the Panda’s rear passenger seat as they waited to be released. Laura decided she could wait a long time here in the darkness, her hand nested within Steele’s and her head resting gently against his leather-clad shoulder, while about them swirled the soft police chatter from the squawk box mounted on the vehicle’s dash. It felt like heaven and she’d be damned before she let him disappear again.

“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly, his voice warm and familiar in the dark, and she realized he felt her sudden shift against him. He knew her so well. Through the front windscreen she saw a familiar, Burberry-coated figure cross beneath a street lamp and approach their parked vehicle.

“Uh, oh.”

“Uh, oh, what?” The tension returned to his voice; he knew she meant that kind of ‘uh, oh’.

She nodded toward the figure. “That older gentleman walking toward us? It’s Chief Inspector Lombard. The Scotland Yard detective investigating the murders. He’s the one looking for you. He didn’t like it that Remington Steele was chasing his chief murder suspect, the Earl of Claridge.”

“Uh, oh.”

She nudged him, gently because of his injury, and reached for the car door; the police hadn’t locked them in. “We’re better off greeting him outside the car. Try to look pitiable—”

“That won’t be difficult.”

“—and follow my lead.” They stepped from the vehicle and onto the pavement, and Laura donned her brightest and cleverest smile as she went on the attack. “Chief Inspector! I’m sorry you were dragged out for another night.” She offered her hand and took the initiative in the conversation. “As you can see, we’ve solved your Ripper problem for you.”

“Apparently so,” quipped their visitor. “And this, I gather—?” The older gentleman turned politely to her companion, even though he damn well knew who stood beside her.

“Remington Steele,” said her partner and offered his own hand. How he managed to combine charisma with pitiable Laura never did quite work out. “My associate, Miss Holt, gives you a glowing report, Chief Inspector. We’re only too glad to assist your lads in capturing this fiendish murderer.”

“And,” Laura interjected swiftly, “we’ve solved it to your satisfaction. The murderer isn’t the Earl of Claridge, but his future brother-in-law, Bradford Galt.”

“Yes, I’ve just returned from speaking with the Earl and his fiancé. It’s a tragic business, all the more given their forthcoming wedding this Saturday. He wished me to convey his gratitude for your discretion. Although,” and he favored Laura with a look, “apparently your methods to accomplish this were rather unconventional.”

Steele glanced at her with raised eyebrow. “Really, Miss Holt?” and he tut-tutted her.

“I’ll apologize to the Earl personally,” she promised. _I hope Mildred is enjoying her free stay at an English estate._

And now Lombard turned his attention to Steele. “I appreciate the lateness of the hour, Mr. Steele, but there is one other matter that requires our attention.”

Steele blinked, caught off-guard. “Is there?” and Laura bit her lip. _Oh, crap. In all the excitement, I forgot about our other little problem. Mr. Steele’s passports._

She jumped in. “Surely, Chief Inspector, that can wait till the morning. Besides, you’ve forgotten Mr. Steele injuries? It happened while he was evading one of your men who failed to identify himself. It’s abdominal and really requires a proper doctor.” She stepped hard on her partner’s foot, partly in payback for the tut-tut. He groaned and she hissed in his ear, “Pitiable, remember?”

“I think,” he said with another groan, “my leaping onto Galt’s hansom cab was perhaps not one of my better ideas.” And he abruptly slumped against the police panda, his face ashen.

“Oh, my god!” Laura and Lombard leapt simultaneously and just managed to catch him before he hit the pavement as he passed out.

***

The hospital casualty ward held Steele overnight while they pumped him full of multiple antibiotics and properly cleaned and dressed his injury. The following morning, while he flirted shamelessly with the nurses and interns, Laura and Mildred collected his suitcase from his SoHo room and returned with it to their rooms at the Hampton, now that Remington Steele no longer needed to hide.

 _Or does he?_ Laura asked herself as she assembled a small case of clean clothes in anticipation of Steele’s discharge from the hospital.

“Does he know yet?” asked Mildred from her perch on Laura’s bed, and Laura knew she wasn’t asking about Mr. Steele’s parentage.

“No,” said Laura and raised her chin. “We were busy capturing a murderer. There wasn’t an opportunity to bring it up.”

“It’s gonna be a hell of a good story.” But Mildred didn’t sound convinced. Rather the opposite.

_Frankly, Mildred, I don’t know how to approach the subject either. I’ve no idea how important those passports are to him. And I don’t know how seriously Lombard is going to take this new problem. Have I found Remington Steele only to force him to take flight again?_

_You can’t leave, now that I’ve found you._

_But I honestly haven’t a clue how to get us out of this one._

 

[This is the end of Part 1 - Steele in the Dark. Laura and Steele's adventures continue in Part 2 - Still Steele, which picks up with the second episode of Steele Searching.]

 


	13. Part 2 – Still Steele

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapters 1 through 12 address missing scenes from part 1 of "Steele Searching". Chapter 13 and moving forward address part 2 of that episode. There was so much happening in those episodes, and yet both feel half-finished even as the story gallops from scene to scene. The remains were a plot that was nearly incomprehensible...and so much that was was left unsaid between Laura and Steele. I made a deliberate decision not to repeat scenes that were already filled. Rather, here's what we should have seen in Part 2.

_It’s grand to be Remington Steele again_ , Steele thought as he rummaged through his suitcase in Laura’s room – _and isn’t that an interesting possibility!_ – in search of shaving tackle and several other of Life’s necessities. He was newly sprung from the hospital and in pursuit of clothing more appropriate than the jeans and open shirt that Laura had brought him. He was definitely feeling more himself and even began to whistle under his breath. Just a little. Because while the delectable Miss Holt was apparently his again, she still uneasy about something and experience had taught him the best strategy was to wait her out until she was ready to voice it.

“Your sartorial suit is in my wardrobe,” Laura said with a nod in the general direction. She sat at the edge of her queen-sized bed. He was an expert at body language and hers was incredibly nervous. He didn’t think it had anything to do with his proximity to her bed. _Which is a pity._ She was saying, “I had it pressed and cleaned. I figured Mr. Steele wants to look his best for Scotland Yard.”

“Splendid! Thank you, Laura. Your attentions warm my heart.” He opted for flirty, casual Steele until he figured out what her problem was. As he held up the garments and inspected them for possible flaws, he decided to enter the conversation sideways. “What’s with Mildred? She barely acknowledged my existence this morning.”

“She’s…got a lot on her mind just now.”

Okay, it wasn’t about Mildred. Satisfied that the suit was Remington Steele quality and his appearance would no longer be reprehensible, he returned to rummaging through his suitcase, which rested on an unfolded rack at the foot of her bed. It also had the advantage of a perfect view of Laura. “I’m a little uncertain,” he now segued conversationally, “on what the Chief Inspector wants to follow-up with us. Presumably to apologize over how his men treated me this past week. What’s our cover story? Remington Steele undercover and in pursuit of justice?”

“Something like that…I’m glad the Earl wasn’t the London ripper.”

“It was a ridiculous notion,” he agreed and dug deeper through the wrinkled clothes. He’d need to prepare a parcel for the hotel laundry. “Anyone can see the Earl’s a man of quality.”

“Only…a cover story would be a good idea right about now.”

“Eh?” He hadn’t heard her because he wasn’t listening. _They_ had disappeared. He squelched down his panic. He’d been through the suitcase four times and they still weren’t in there.

He glanced up with deceptive casualness. “Ah, Laura. You haven’t perchance seen my passports, have you? Only they don’t seem to be in my luggage.”

“No, they aren’t,” she said. Then she sighed. Her left eyebrow began to twitch.

“Laura...” 

Her bedspread suddenly became absolutely fascinating. “It seems you and I trained Mildred all too well. She found them when I asked her to search your SoHo flat for clues.”

“Oh, then that’s a relief. I was afraid they’d gone missing.” Then the penny dropped. “ _Mildred_ found them?!” His voice jumped a register.

“She did. It was rather a bombshell for her.”

“Hence the snubbed conversation and absence of her puppy-dog loyalty at the hospital.” He sighed deeply. “I suppose my morning tea and newspaper are off the table now.”

“That’s not the worst of it.”

His eyes narrowed. “Worst of it?” Then he really looked at Laura. Her expression said that this was dead serious. _Okay, poor choice of cliché_.

“There’s no easy way to say this. Unfortunately, Mildred didn’t tell me right away when she found them. They were tucked in her purse, and she dropped them when Galt’s Ripper attacked her in SoHo. Lombard’s officer picked them up. That’s why we’re meeting with the Chief Inspector. Because Scotland Yard, in the form of Lombard, has your five passports.”

There were very few things in life that stunned him. Laura telling him they were finished. That their relationship was strictly business.

And learning that his passport identities were in Scotland Yard’s possession. It was like the oxygen was abruptly sucked from the room. Or his life line was just severed. He was launched from the trapeze without catcher or net.

 “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to tell you. And then with this business about your possible father. And the Ripper. And your injuries…” She looked miserable. Much as how he felt. _Small consolation_.

“My god.” And then he began to think. Quickly. Calculating dates.  He frowned. “There’s still four years before the statute of limitations runs out.”

“But how many of those are actually linked to one of your personas?” asked Laura, going for the essential point. He loved her logic. One of the many, many things he loved about her. “The British police can suspect all they like, but they can’t act without proof. And one thing I’ve learned about you, is that you’re very, very good. There’s very little in the way of hard evidence against Messers O’Leary, Fabrini, Quintain, Blaine, and Moreau. Suspicions, at least in the cases I could find. But nothing that could be taken to court.” She tried to smile. “And I do have some expertise in that subject.”

He replayed what she’d just said and hastily backpedaled to the fundamentals.

“You researched me?” His voice squeaked.

“In the beginning. Of course, we did.” She sounded defensive. “As soon as we found the five passports. Murphy did a thorough search. And I, um, I didn’t find anything either.”

“Laura?”

She glanced away. “I have Mildred check periodically. Maybe twice a year. Just in case.”

“In case what?” This was getting worse and worse. This was Laura. The woman who came after him. Believed in him. Or he thought she did. Now he wasn’t sure what he should believe.

“In case someone somewhere gets the idea to come after you! Like Inspector Rios in Acapulco! You’re not gonna be arrested or kidnapped on my watch!”

“Yes, it’d be a helluva scandal for the agency!”

“It’d be a helluva blow for both of us! You’re my partner, dammit! I need you!”

“Do you, Laura? I thought we were finished last we spoke.” He didn’t believe it. Not again.

She finally exploded. “I flew all the way over here to find you, didn’t I? And I did find you! Twice! I’ll be damned before I let Lombard or anyone else take you away from me! You’re not leaving me!” She glared at him, and, oddly, his own anger abruptly died.

“You mean that?”

“Yes.” She looked down at her hands. “Probably.”

Suddenly he strode across the room, pulled her from the bed, and lifted her into a kiss that demonstrated just how thankful he was that she’d come after him. And after a surprised moment, her hands came up and around his shoulders to embrace him in return. To kiss him just as deeply. Just as thankfully. He hadn’t meant to kiss her like that – there was still so much unresolved between them – but those rare instances when her vulnerability was exposed shot right past his defenses.

When he finally and reluctantly released her, his own head spinning, it was to take a step back. There were so many things he wanted to say to her. But now wasn’t the right time. Instead, what he said was, “I shouldn’t be risking the agency, having gotten it back for you.”

“Then we’d better think of a damn good cover story.”

It was then that he finally grinned. “I think I’ve got a good one for you.”

 

[to be continued in Part 2 of 'Still Steele']


	14. Part 2 – Still Steele

They had rehearsed the lines together. Admittedly, this was over the top, but Laura was not about to risk her agency, her good name, and definitely not Mr. Steele’s liberty against the forces of Scotland Yard. Lombard’s willingness to bend the rules – defer to authority – in the events surrounding the Earl of Claridge led Laura to suspect he was amenable to another bout of rule-bending. Especially given the Earl’s good word over his relationship with Steele. Or lack of relationship, to be honest. Laura groaned. Why couldn’t anything involving her ersatz Remington Steele be simple and uncomplicated?

They had settled on a cover story. Or, to be accurate, Laura built a framework around Steele’s idea, and then he’d embroidered it beautifully. “I’d been on the case from the first murder,” rehearsed Steele with a mental cross of the fingers. “An investigation so delicate that my associates Miss Holt and Miss Krebs were explicitly forbidden from divulging our suspicions. I was deep undercover in the very neighborhood, tracking the culprit to his lair. How unfortunate that we mistook each other’s intentions, Chief Inspector. It could have resolved much pain and agony.” This latter statement, of course, was accompanied by a very sincere wince of pain.

“That’s good,” Laura had urged. “Make him feel guilty over your injury. We need a bargaining chip against those passports.”

“Not legitimate, of course…undercover work…in gratitude from his prior international service…strictly hush-hush…dreadfully sorry about the confusion…healing nicely, thanks.” Laura thought that last was an especially nice touch, intended to engender guilt on the Inspector’s side, since Steele had never been under threat of arrest.

Moreover, they were ‘given to understand’ that a telephone call had been placed from the Earl’s residence to the Assistant Commissioner himself. Apparently the Earl intended to smooth their way with the authorities. Laura could only hope that the Earl still had credibility in that circle, given his own, less-than-exemplary past and his family’s current escapades.

So now, here she was, cooling her heels in Chief Inspector Lombard’s office – really, this was starting to become a home-away-from-home – and glancing repeatedly at her wristwatch as Mr. Steele failed to show. Laura kept her pleasant face plastered on display while Mildred looked more and more concerned. The goodwill Laura had worked hard to engender was draining away with the clock.

At one point Lombard had said, “I’m afraid I can’t look the other way on these,” and fanned the passports across his desk. “I do hope he has a passport in his real name.”

She’d endured thirty-two minutes and her third cup of tea, and it took all of Laura’s willpower to maintain that cultured pleasant demeanor. “I don’t know what’s keeping him. I really must apologize. Perhaps it’s another case?” She turned swiftly. “Mildred. Perhaps you could just call the hotel and place an inquiry?”

“I’m on it.” The woman fled with relief at something to do. Lombard offered to freshen Laura’s teacup and she placed a hasty hand over it in negation. She was almost floating.

Several very long minutes later, Mildred reappeared.

“Well, Mildred?”

“The Boss is so sorry, Miss Holt. He was called away unexpectedly on the Nero case.”

Laura blinked. “Nero?”

“Yes. You know. The one about those diamonds—” She clapped a hand over her mouth and flushed. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t supposed to mention it.”

“That’s okay, Mildred. There, there.” And she patted her colleague’s shoulder in a manner that would have made the boss proud. “Did he leave a message?”

“Yes. He wants you ‘round Cartier’s right away.”

Lombard rose, evidently as relieved as Laura was over Mildred’s subterfuge. “I am sorry, Miss Holt. Perhaps another time?”

“Absolutely. Thank you for understanding.”

As the two women walked from the building, Laura gave Mildred a hug. “Quick thinking, Mildred! Where is he?”

“I dunno! He didn’t pick up the phone. I don’t know where he is!”

“What!?” She stopped in midstep and stared at her colleague.

“The concierge saw him leave the hotel when he was supposed to, and he disappears after that!”

Laura ground her teeth. “I’m beginning to think that ‘peripatetic’ is our Mr. Steele’s real name. Come on, Mildred. Once more unto the breech. And this time? When I find him, I’m gonna chain him to a tree and let him rot!”

 

As she told Mildred, it had felt good to give her anger full-rein at Mr. Steele’s disappearance, if only for a few minutes. Sometimes he was so damn secretive, and it fueled her frustrations time and again and led her to question if he could ever be the fully trusted partner that she needed. It was a vicious circle – she had sense enough to know that – because she withheld her own trust whenever he went behind her back. And he went behind her back because he didn’t want to face her suspicion. He said more than once that he was always “on trial” with her and, when she was honest with herself, she knew it was true. It was, in fact, part of what drove him away these past months. They had worked against each other throughout the Westfield case and she wrongly blamed him for losing the agency’s license. With no agency to bind them, her fear of abandonment took free rein and she got exactly what she deserved.

Now that she had found him, could they ever return to how they once had been? These past lonely months taught her the difficult lesson that she needed him in her life. There was no denying it – hers was half a life without him. And his words in that bedbug-riddled bedsit suggested his own desire for her might be just as strong.

_What’s the one thing holding us back between us? My name. My real name._

His words confirmed what his amnesiac-half had wondered aloud last year in Ireland, a confession that had left her speechless. The man who portrayed Remington Steele didn’t know his real name. Didn’t know who his father was.

And in a single stroke, his admission had let her see deeper into this man’s heart than she’d ever seen before. He’d shared with her what was possibly his most closely held secret. That this elegant, self-possessed, admired man had been an unwanted nobody.

_Well, I want you in my life, Mr. Steele. And the implied promise in your words makes me think you want me in yours._

_“…What’s the one thing holding us back between us?…_ ”

_What happens when you finally have a name to give me? I need to know. I need to know what happens next between us._

Was it possible that desperation to finally learn his real name – now so temptingly close – had led him to miss the appointment with Chief Inspector Lombard?

_It’s the most important question of your life and I can’t imagine your ignoring it. Is that where you’ve disappeared to? To find your real father?_

_And what happens to us when you do? Will we still have a future together? Or do you instead move into a new life?_

With a confusing mixture of excitement and trepidation, she took herself once again to the London estate of the Earl of Claridge.

She had to find out.

She had to know.

*****

The estate was a hive of activity as the Earl’s staff prepared for his wedding. It was solely the man’s gratitude at unmasking the murder that gained her admission and an unscheduled personal audience. Laura was surprised and disappointed to discover that Mr. Steele hadn’t paid a visit, because where else could he have gone? She felt ridiculous telling the story about the watch and Mr. Steele’s quest; it was like a plot from one of his old movies. True, the watch was old and expensive and resembled something an Earl might own. But thousands of people had the initials K.L. and Kevin Landers wasn’t even the Earl’s proper name, for heaven’s sake. Its trail was three-plus decades old, and the odds were against its owner still being alive.

So she was stunned when the Earl not only recognized the watch, but recited the engraving inside its cover and confirmed the story that he had intended the watch for his son.

And, even more incredibly, the Earl acknowledged that he had fathered an illegitimate son. A man who would be in his mid-thirties and likely born in Ireland. Like his father, possibly dark. Possibly tall.

The interview ended abruptly as the Earl had a pending appointment. As that gentleman departed, a shaken Laura took a long look around the Earl’s library where he had received her.  The tall ceilings were bordered with intricately decorated moldings, and its walls were covered with original oil paintings and leather-bound books and gilt-framed portraits that spoke of a history that dated back generations. Centuries.

History and wealth and security and privilege. All the things a young Mr. Steele never had. Things the adult Mr. Steele had carefully crafted to surround himself as he made his way through the world.

  
She felt an uneasy twinge as she admired the expense and the privilege that the estate house represented. It was a foreign world and seemed an unlikely place for a California girl like Laura Holt. And yet, she couldn’t be jealous. Her heart swelled with joy at her partner’s good fortune, and her happiness was unbound that she could finally provide him with the answer that he longed for.

_And then we discover what happens when that barrier between us disappears._

She continued to bask in the anticipation of his potential happiness, and was thrilled for his good fortune. A sentiment that lasted an additional thirty-two seconds. Which was when she glanced through the doorway where the Earl had exited and recognized the mustachioed visitor who was the Earl’s next pressing appointment.

 


	15. Part 2 – Still Steele

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, Felicia and Remington!

**An Abandoned Farm outside London**

The damned shovel gun was a cold, clumsy construction in his hands, and he hoped the sweat trickling down the back of his neck wouldn’t give away the game that he was no hired assassin and that the bloody gun was never going to work as promised. He passed back the screwdriver to one of Armstrong's men, raised the weapon once again and squinted along its curved length at the hanging target. And then his gaze widened as he spotted a second, oval object just to the target’s left, as if suspended above the farmyard’s wooden fence. Laura Holt’s face peered back at his, her own expression equally startled as she took in the ridiculous scene. Fortunately, everyone else either had their backs to her or their attention fixed on him and the happy face melon. Laura! How on earth?

Seeing her was like a miracle and her unexpected appearance gave him courage. Together, they were invincible and it promised they would get out of this okay. His tension vanished. He drew in a breath. Released it. And sent the bullet squarely into melon face’s forehead. Fruit pulp exploded in a sensational red spray and the miners whooped and clapped. Daniel withdrew a handkerchief to mop his brow and, for once, even Felicia looked impressed. And then…

“Hey! Who’s that!” Suddenly Laura vanished and the Armstrong’s men were pointing at where she’d just been.

“Good lord!” said Daniel. “It’s Linda!”

“Lisa,” corrected Felicia.

“Laura,” he corrected them both, and her name was a prayer that fell from his lips. It took all his self-restraint not to load another cartridge into the ridiculous gun and aim for the men shooting at her slim figure as she sprinted across the grassy field and dove into the thick bramble that edged the surrounding woodland. But there was a half-dozen of them and just one of him, and he wouldn’t stand a chance and they’d all end up dead and the Earl would still be murdered. So he clenched his fists and urged her flight through sheer will and outwardly tried to pretend that the stranger was of no consequence to any of them.

Yet, although he couldn’t come to Laura’s rescue, he hadn’t abandoned her. Quite the opposite. He had absolute faith in her ability to escape and get the help he desperately needed. He knew she’d give the men the slip. She was resourceful and would elude their pursuit; he’d seen it time and again. And through her efforts, perhaps unintentionally, she had just given him another opportunity to derail this mad scheme and extract his old friend Daniel and even Felicia before either of them was harmed.

Yes, Laura had gotten away and would call in the cavalry. He had faith.

Although…He tugged at an earlobe. Given her astonished expression as she peered over the fence, it was equally possible that she would instead return with a large axe to lop off his head.

It seemed unlikely. But he wasn’t entirely certain.

As soon as a gloating Armstrong disappeared back into the manor house with the surprisingly successful shovel gun, Remington pulled Daniel aside. “I’ve got to find Laura,” he murmured into his mentor’s ear, so no one would overhear. “I have to know she’s all right.”

“Armstrong’s men haven’t returned yet, my boy. That’s a good sign.”

“I know…” His gaze drifted toward the fields. “But I have to get out of here.” Daniel was right, of course, and their failure to return meant Laura still eluded them, and that was cause for optimism. Still…He always hedged his bets, and now he slipped inside just long enough to grab one of Daniel’s jackets against the cool, damp weather, and then headed back outside to search for Laura…and missed a knowing exchange of glances between Daniel and Felicia that said, _Keep an eye on him._

He spent the next half hour in a deceptively casual stroll about the abandoned farm property, probing hedges with a stout tree limb and softly calling her name. He was relieved to find nothing and hoped it meant she really was headed back to London for reinforcements. Until then, perhaps he could find another way out of this mess. There was a disused and weathered barn, but nary a horse he could ride out. He pulled apart stacks of old lumber and half-empty sacks of mildewed seed in hopes of finding anything he could use. In an overlooked corner was a dusty pile of hay, and he shoveled it apart with both hands to discover an unexpected treasure. It was a motorcycle, and even thought it had two flat tires, lacked a starter key, and was so old that Lawrence of Arabia might have ridden it, it was still worth a shot and was transport out of here. He unscrewed the gas cap and confirmed there was a liter or two of petrol in its tank, but his initial attempts to start the bike failed. He fished a coin from his pocket and was crouched before the bike to unscrew the engine casing and hotwire it, when there came a soft rustle against the hay-covered floor at the barn’s entrance. For a moment he thought it was her, and his heart lurched hard against his chest.

It wasn’t her, of course. It was Felicia. He stuffed down his disappointment and didn’t look up as the dark hem of her long wool coat and her elegant suede boots appeared at the fringe of his downward-directed vision. But even if she hadn’t stood beside him, her familiar, intoxicating perfume was unmistakable, and it brought back memories of a time when her mere presence swirled his senses and intoxicated him far more than any champagne. But that was years behind him, now, and any power she once had over him was long gone. He still had a residual affection for her – there was too much shared history – but once you tasted high-end champagne, you could never return to the cheap.

He knew why she was here. She and Daniel needed him, and this was her attempt to keep him from leaving. So he sighed to himself and continued to apply a firm touch to undoing the casing’s rusted screws, even as her light touch ran sensuously along the back of his neck, exposed beneath his open collar. “This reminds me of that farmhouse in Bordeaux,” she said. He remembered the Bordeaux farmhouse. And he shivered despite himself.

She would have felt his betraying tremor and now the fabric of her coat rustled as she bent over him. The slim hand slipped forward and deliberately brushed his chest through the thin cotton of his open-necked dress shirt, then slid between its buttons to caress the skin beneath. “You were quite the savage tiger then.” Her breath warmed the sensitive skin behind his ear. “Romantic…yet savage.” And she gently raked the tips of her painted nails against his flesh as a deliberate reminder of the savage.

He briefly closed his eyes and tried to harden his heart instead of another part of his anatomy, but damn her, Felicia knew his body as well as he, and she knew how to make him respond. He also knew it was she who had called the police to her Kensington flat, and that it had been Daniel’s jacket on her bed. He was tired of them both for dancing into his life and trying to hijack it with another piece of nonsense that jeopardized his life, Laura’s life, and the one he hoped to have with her. Felicia wasn’t here because she cared for him. She was her because Daniel had sent her and this was all just a poor attempt to coerce him to stay. So he gritted his teeth against temptation and focused on removing the casing screw. Another hard twist and it finally pulled away, and he pressed the cover plate into her now-empty palm. “Hold this, will you?”

Her exclamation of annoyance was paired with a metallic _clack_ as she flung the plate against the adjacent wooden wall. Then soft lips began to trace a warm line along his ear. His jaw tightened and he tried to focus on locating the ignition wires tucked inside the casing.

“Make me growl for more,” she said, and warm breath journeyed down his open neckline. Her nips against the exposed skin sent tingles down his spine, and in another time he would have turned fiercely on her then, and shown her what an inner tiger could desire.

But he was no longer that man, so he brushed her inquisitive hands away and applied his own deft fingers to retrieve the ignition wires from deep within the opened engine casing. He brushed away the dust from each bare end and touched their tips together, and hope was buoyed by a yellow spark that leapt from one corroded wire to the next. It was far more satisfying than the sparks that Felicia was fanning in his groin.

He twisted to glance up at her, and the gesture had the merit of putting distance between them. She was so heart-meltingly beautiful, her delicate features framed by the high collar of her expensive coat and the silver hoops of her earrings. “Felicia, did it ever occur to you that we’re in serious trouble?’

She smiled with that mischievous look that, once upon a time, made his knees dissolve and his breath catch. “We’re that way the moment we’re born, darling. The trick is to make the best of it.” And in the next moment, she pushed him back against the deep pile of hay that he’d pulled away from the motorcycle, and followed his momentum to land squarely atop him. “And as I remember, you were one of the best at making the best of it.”

She kissed him. Hard. Her teeth nibbled at his lips and her tongue flicked to brush against his tongue, and, for a moment, remembrance flooded back and they were bare-skinned and tumbling deep within a down mattress back in Bordeaux, forgetting their recent troubles while they drank from a sensual intoxication that was as heady as any of the region’s famous wines. He felt his answering hardness and she rubbed her hips against him to communicate all too clearly what she was interested in.

But he wasn’t interested in her. Not anymore. With a grunt of effort, he grasped Felicia by slim wrists and pushed her away. She fell back against the hay and her breathing accelerated and her gorgeous eyes flashed with anger. Her lips were full and wanted to be kissed. He desired her despite himself and the realization only fed his anger. He was angry with himself, angry with her refusal to recognize his new life, and angry with her betrayal back in Kensington. He said, tightly, “Bordeaux’s a long way from here. I have a new life now.”

“With little Laurie?” she asked, betraying her jealously.

“Laura,” he corrected firmly and his gaze narrowed with disapproval. “You were always so good with names. Why is it you have such difficulty remembering that one?”

“Perhaps because it’s the only one you ever remembered for more than one night.” She pulled herself to her feet and brushed away hay strands and indignity from her crisp wool slacks. He almost corrected her, then stopped himself. Let her stew. She wouldn’t believe him anyway. Wouldn’t believe that for three years he had dedicated himself to a life and a woman he’d yet to sleep with.

His momentary uncertainty must have betrayed him, for her anger abruptly vanished, only to be replaced with a knowing cunning. “Well…my method would’ve been hugely rewarding for both of us," she said, "but there’s more than one way to hold a man.” She’d always been lightning fast and before he could stop her, she yanked the ignition wires from the motorcycle’s engine and flung them at him before stalking from the barn, rejected and with her head held high.

                                                                                                            ***

He wasted another hour on the motorcycle before finally admitted that the ancient vehicle was never going to run. He was stuck here with Daniel and Felicia and the mentally unbalanced Armstrong. And in the meantime, the Earl was preparing for nuptials that he might not live to enjoy, and somewhere out there was Laura, dead or alive. Armstrong’s men had finally returned to the farm in a miserable state that confirmed they hadn’t found Laura, and he gathered from their cryptic comments that she might have made it to London, and he took solace from that.

As dusk fell, it became obvious they wouldn’t be fed, so he coerced Felicia into an uneasy truce, and had her help him pull together odds and ends from the weathered refrigerator into a stew that was barely edible. Afterward, Daniel helped him with the wash-up using icy water brought from a well, while Armstrong lingered at the farmhouse table with his precious shovel gun and muttered pejoratives as the shovel’s gold surface glinted and flashed in the dim light of their only lantern. For Remington’s part, he was too keyed up to sleep. He said his good-nights and took himself into the late evening gloaming, mindful of the armed men who stalked the abandoned estate’s perimeter. He strolled languidly across the overgrown property and surreptitiously searched behind low walls and bushes and probed tufts of uncut hay with a well-shod foot. He was terrified that he might have called it wrong and that he’d find Laura’s crumpled, bloodied body. It was the stuff of his nightmares. Remembering her like that, long ago.

And that was how Felicia found him, worrying at a toothpick and pacing through the dampening grass as the heavy dew grew, his hands thrust deep into his jacket pockets. He heard her soft step long before he smelled her expensive cologne. At one time, their unexpected encounter in the dark would be its own heady concoction, and he would have lost himself in her enticing charms.

But things were different now.

“I thought I might find you here,” were her first words, and in them he heard the preamble to an apology.

“There aren’t exactly many places one could go,” he said, and tossed the toothpick toward the distant shadow of an armed man, silhouetted against the violet hues of the rural night sky.

“Darling.” She drew her arm through his. It was chilly in the dusk despite the oversized coat he’d borrowed from Daniel. “Don’t be mean.”

“I’m not the one who got us stuck here.”

“If you’re looking for a quiet place for a tryst, I can suggest far more enticing quarters than a pile of dead grass.”

“I’m not looking for a tryst, Felicia.”

“No, I can see that. You’re looking for Lisa.”

“Laura. And you damn well know her name.”

“Tell me, Michael. Is she as much fun in bed as we were? She seems like rather a stick in the mud.” She was trying to provoke him. She drew her free hand, the one that wasn’t tucked through his arm, into the opening of his jacket and against the thin fabric of his shirt. But it gave him no thrill and the touch he sought belonged to a different woman.

He turned away a little and the warm hand withdrew. He said, “A gentleman never reveals the secrets of the boudoir.”

“No…You’ve always been the perfect gentleman, Michael. And whatever she has, I wish she’d bottle it and sell it to the rest of us.”

He had to chuckle then, ruefully. “You’ve no idea."

“Tell me, darling…if there were no Laura in your life – see, I got it right this time – would there be any room for me?” She was in an oddly reflective mood, so unusual for her and a complete one-eighty from this afternoon’s sex kitten. He decided they were both past that and did her the honor of being honest.

“Laura _is_ in my life. At least…I hope she is.” He thought of her fleeing figure. Of how she flew six thousand miles from LA to London to find him. _I hope you want me in your life as much as I need you in mine._

She tugged gently at his coat sleeve. “I must admit – though never for publication – it’s all been quite empty without you, Michael. All rather shabby, no matter how sumptuous the setting, how generous the partner.” She stopped then and, because he was a gentleman, he stopped as well and faced her. She said, “I never should have let you get away. I should have clung to you. Fought for you. Will you give me that opportunity now?” She leaned in toward him and tilted her beautiful face to match her lips with his. He breathed her floral scent and felt the heat of her lithe body pressed against his.

And he pulled away. Turned his face so that soft lips brushed against his cheek. “I’m flattered.”

She straightened and he saw the hurt that briefly flashed in those eyes. “But uninterested.”

“Let’s say…previously committed.”

“Odd…that’s the one thing none of the rest of us could ever squeeze out of you, regardless of how persuasive we were.”

His own features twisted into an expression of rue. “Believe me, it wasn’t something I planned on.” He reached for her, then. This was Felicia. He had never loved her. Not really. She’d been great fun and a marvelous companion and just the tonic he needed after Anna had disappeared. But his life had moved on, and so had hers, and the river never ran through the same course twice.

He cupped her face in his hands. A stunningly beautiful face that used to stop his heart. One last time. And lightly brushed his lips against hers. Tenderly. Affectionately. And with an unmistakable message of farewell.

“Sleep well, Felicia.,” he said quietly, and then walked back toward the compound. There was no more he could do tonight, and he would need all of his wits tomorrow.

If tomorrow permitted him a future.

[To be continued...]

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note – The brief dialog between Remington and Daniel after Laura disappears, and the followings scene in the barn between Remington and Felicia and the motorcycle is not mine. The dialogue and direction are taken directly from Michael Gleason's script for the episode. I don’t know if this scene was filmed or if it even existed. I was excited to come across it and have tried to recreate it here as best I could. I hope you enjoy it!


	16. Part 2 – Still Steele

**London – Estate of the Earl of Claridge**

It was over. The attempt to assassinate the Earl of Claridge had failed. And the Earl’s beautiful wedding reception, carefully designed so that it didn’t quite upstage the one several years earlier for Charles and Diana, had instead dissolved into chaos.

The two hundred elegant guests – an impressive list of minor royalty, near-royalty and Society Who’s-Who’s – milled about the main gallery of the Earl’s London estate in a chattering confusion of morning coats with tails, pastel gowns, bejeweled necklines, and a cloud of enormous-brimmed hats. The police had hustled the newly-wedded Earl and his bride to an undisclosed location (Laura thought they were upstairs in the Earl’s private apartment) even before the smoke from the explosion had cleared. Now the forces of Scotland Yard, plus what Laura suspected were MI-5 types brought in for the royalty’s sake, had taken control of the scene. The guests were still penned in the gallery where the explosion had occurred, an expansive hall that featured gleaming oak-paneling and an army of Claridge family portraits by artists famous and forgotten. The ceiling's gilt-cornices were smudged with generous grey soot, and a man-sized blackened hole dominated the base of the oak staircase. Laura stood off to one side in a quiet niche fronted by window view of the gardens, and she nursed a well-deserved stem of champagne as she watched the professionals restore chaos to order. Two officers were taping off the explosion area with the yellow ribbons that defined a crime scene, while a pair of SOCOs donned in white tyvak suits crawled on hands and knees along its perimeter and marked bits of blacked evidence with little yellow plastic triangles. Uniformed constables sporting black-and-white checked caps formed a loose ring around the milling guests, who were less upset than they ought to have been because someone had wisely opened the drinks bar and the staff were now pouring liquid tranquilizers as fast as the guests could consume them. In singles and pairs, the police led the guests to another room for interviews by Lombard and his associates. _They’d better hurry,_ thought Laura, _or the guests will be too tipsy to be witnesses._ She was among the first to be interviewed and now watched the spectacle and mulled over her next steps.

_When am I going to learn that nothing involving Mr. Steele is ever simple? Or straight-forward?_

And then the man himself suddenly appeared, as if conjured by her thoughts. He stood in a doorway at the far end of the long gallery, released from where the medics had swooped him up after the dust cleared to dress his minor cuts from the explosion. Steele argued his minor abrasions were from Laura’s flying tackle, but her real concern was that the explosive concussion might have reopened his abdominal stitches. Those fears must have been baseless, because he looked like himself again and was searching the room for someone. Daniel? Felicia? He’d taken the brunt of the blast and yet looked debonair in his spotless black tuxedo and not a hair out of place. _How does he do it? I’ve got a wrecked hairdo, a torn hem, and a broken strap on my left heel._

Then his gaze locked with hers, and with surprise and maybe a little thrill she realized he was looking for her. He made a bee-line for her and smoothly navigated the crowd with a practiced smile that gave away nothing. Well, that wasn’t true. What he gave away was in his gaze, fixed on her, and there was something in his expression that made her tingle despite her better judgment.

She deposited her drink on a passing waiter’s tray and, as he neared, reached to touch his arm and pull him toward her. She didn’t want anyone overhearing them. “Listen! I told Lombard you were undercover trying to foil the assassination attempt–”

Or that was what she intended to say. Instead, Steele took her by the shoulders. “I was terrified when Armstrong’s men shot at you. I walked all through those fields last night and couldn’t find you. Thank heavens you’re all right.” Then he drew her into a tight embrace, and followed it with a deep kiss that tasted of him and gunpowder and made abundantly clear how worried he had been about her safety. It was more than gratifying.

“You wanted to tell me something?”

She wasn’t even aware that he’d pulled back to look at her until his words registered.

“Huh?”

He smiled at that. “My brilliant detective. How did you know?”

She pulled herself together; his unexpected kiss – and its ferocity – had left her brain sputtering. There had been too few kisses for so long and it had shot right past her resistance. “About the gun exploding? And the Earl being the target? I didn’t, at first. But I spotted Daniel at the Earl’s residence and followed him. Because with Daniel, mischief always follows and it meant you had to be involved. How did you—”

“Daniel didn’t know I was in town. He thought I was back in L.A.” _Back in LA? Why would he think—_ But Steele barreled onward. “He never meant to involve me. He was surprised as I when I appeared at that farmhouse. Armstrong kidnapped me outside our hotel on my way to Lombard’s. He thought I was their hired assassin who didn’t actually exist. Felicia’s doing,” he added dourly.

That got her attention. “Lombard! We still have to explain your passports!”

“Eventually,” he agreed, and then Laura was again immersed in a longing and comforting kiss and, this time, she decided to share her own relief at their reunion.

Over the pleasant humming in her ears, she became aware of a round of throat clearing beside them. “Quick work, my boy.” Daniel, naturally. S _otto voce_. Then he said, louder, back in whatever character he was playing at, “Mr. Steele? Miss Holt? Your presence is requested by the authorities.”

Laura shifted to ostensibly nuzzle Steele’s neck and murmured in his ear. “Follow my lead.”

“Same story?”

“Second verse. You were working undercover.”

“I love dancing with you, Miss Holt.”

“You cut a fast tango yourself, Mr. Steele.”

As they followed Daniel, Steele favored his former mentor with a fixed look. “Quaintly put, Daniel.”

***

Chief Inspector Lombard bought Laura’s story about Steele’s undercover work. At least superficially. The subject of passports didn’t arise, but the gleam in Scotland Yard’s eye clearly said _Later_. After their joint statement, Lombard released Laura and asked Steele for additional statements against Armstrong and the other miners. Laura took the opportunity and slipped away from the investigational hubbub in search of her next quarry. There were definite advantages to being “the unidentified woman”. She’d spent a lot of time thinking about their next problem and, unfortunately, she kept circling back to the same impossible solution.

It took a little hunting through the Earl’s expansive residence, but she finally tracked Daniel Chalmers to an opulent, first floor room that had all the appearances of a museum, down to the barred windows. She hadn’t fully worked out how Daniel Chalmers and that damn minx Felicia fit into the assassination scheme, apart from they managed at least some of the driving. Presumably, Steele would provide her with a heavily redacted version later and, anyway, Felicia had vaporized the instant the police appeared and Laura had no desire to pursue Mr. Steele’s former paramour.

Daniel stood idly before a glass-fronted display case, hands sunk in his pockets and rocking slightly on his heels, apparently lost in thought. The patently false wig and mustache were gone, and he had introduced himself to Lombard and the Earl as a security expert whose mission was to protect the Earl and foil the assassination attempt.

_Yeah. Right._

Laura took the unguarded moment as her quarry stood before the display case, back to her, and considered her formidable opponent. What was the lingering basis for his animosity against her?  Was it jealousy at the loss of his student and partner? She knew from dropped hints that he and Steele hadn’t been formal partners for years, including the most recent years just before Remington Steele entered her own life. Was it because Steele now walked the straight and narrow – mostly – since arriving in L.A.? Did Daniel mourn for a lost talent? She had entertained that hypothesis for some time before eventually discarding it. This was about something else. Jealousy, perhaps? Competition of some sort. For something deeper than Steele’s obvious affection? That made little sense unless Daniel read more into Steele’s relationship with her than actually existed. There was a deeper history between the two men than she hadn’t been able to deduce. Maybe one day she’d figure it out?

She squared her shoulders and made briskly for Chalmers, making her presence plain. He didn’t look up and, as she approached, she now saw that the glass case was chock-a-brim with bejeweled items – necklaces, earrings, tiaras, a gold reliquary. _Of course. That’s what he and Felicia were really after._ The last pieces fell into place. She’d known that Chalmers wasn’t the murdering kind; it would attract the wrong kind of attention. And, truth be told, she didn’t think he had the bottle, to borrow a phrase from Mr. Steele.

After long moments, he finally spoke. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

“If you like that sort of thing,” she replied.

“I suppose you don’t like beautiful valuables.”

“I do. When they’re honestly obtained.”

He sighed. “Felicia’s right. I don’t know what he sees in you, either.”

She ignored the attempt at provocation. This was a conversation she had to win. She needed Daniel, or she and Steele would lose everything. At least, everything she believed they both sought. Especially considering that last kiss. She said, “You should be thankful it didn’t come off.”

“Yes. A useful reminder to steer clear of amateurs.” He gave her a pointed look.

“Especially those who never wanted to participate in the first place.”

“Touché, Linda.”

She nodded back toward the heavy, carved door she’d entered through. “He’s with the authorities now. Explaining to them how Remington Steele infiltrated the group and ‘resolved to deflect their murderous intent’. That’s a quote, I expect.”

“And will they believe him?” His eyes went wide.

“Most people do when a man’s trying to prevent his own father’s murder.”

“His father?” The eyes went even wider. “Now who’s spinning tales?”

There was no point in hiding the story; Daniel would learn it from his Harry soon enough, if he didn’t know already and was playing the innocent with her. “Someone sent him a watch last year. Anonymously. Apparently, it had once belonged to his father. Mr. Steele tracked the inscription to Ireland, and then to London. The Earl recognized the watch as the one he’d given to the mother of his illegitimate child.”

“I wondered what old Harry was doing here in England instead of L.A.,” he said, and there was a sarcasm in his voice that suggested he knew more about Steele’s travels than either of them was admitting. “Amazing! His own father, you say?” Daniel shook his head. “To think of all the effort I might have saved, knowing that. I could have just asked Harry for the key to this case!”

Laura knew he was just trying to wind her up. And she had to resist because she needed him. “That’s why I’m here,” she said. “Because Harry – Mr. Steele – needs your help.”

Now those silvered eyebrows did rise. “Oh? I thought you didn’t approve of my kind of help.”

“I don’t. But I acknowledge that you have special…talents. And right now, he needs your help more than ever.”

“Can I be hearing this right?” he said, and his voice was rich with mock awe. “Linda, the straight-and-narrow detective, asking for my assistance?”

“You’re hoping I’ll beg,” she said, her voice hardening. “But that’s not necessary because my weapon is far more formidable.”

“You have no weapon.” His light tone was belied by a cold hardness in his eyes. “It’s been lovely to see Harry again. Even you, Linda. But you both made your positions perfectly clear the last time we met. Harry chose to stay with you. In L.A. His problems are your problems, now. Fortunately for you both, you’re very good at pulling him out of trouble.”

Laura Holt was fully aware that she was half a foot shorter, sixty pounds lighter, and thirty years junior to the man who called himself Daniel Chalmers. By rights, he should intimidate her. But those forces were countered by the ferocity of her own heart. A strength that, if she had thought to examine it, would be named ‘love’.

She stepped forward two paces and deliberately put herself into his personal space. He swayed back and she followed him forward so his back was against the display case. She lifted herself like a dancer on point so her center of gravity was almost even with his own. And she fixed him with a hard gaze and let him see the strength of her anger.

“You owe him,” she said and pushed a slim finger against the black fabric of his cheap tuxedo for emphasis. “You manipulated him into covering your sorry ass when your ridiculous scheme over those miners got out of hand. He played along, just like he did with the Rutherford business, when he could have just left you in the lurch. We both know he only stayed to help you because for some bizarre reason known only to the two of you, he loves you. You’re a father figure to him.”

A painful expression darted across Daniel’s face, so fleeting that Laura would have missed it if her attention hadn’t been fully focused on him.

“That means a great deal to me,” he said. “More than you know.”

Her gaze narrowed with suspicion. “Is that honesty? From Daniel Chalmers?  Because I’ll tell you something else, before you get too complacent about his presence here. He’s only here in London because he was desperate to identify his father. He’s trying to discover his real name.” _And because I drove him away. Could I have possibly been any stupider than I was?_ But she’d be damned before she admitted that to her rival.

One eyebrow rose. “Really, Linda? His name? Poor Harry seems to be descending into maudlin sentiment. Most unlike him.” He clucked and shook his head. “Or…perhaps Remington Steele’s good name isn’t enough for him?”

His shot struck true and her temper flared briefly. “It’s a damn sight better than hiding behind a series of fictional movie characters—”

“Careful, my dear. Pot calling the kettle black, methinks.” He moved away, then, brushing past her to a portable drinks bar that had been set up for the aborted wedding reception and helped himself to a whiskey. “There was a time,” he continued above the clink of ice hitting glass, “when young Harry’s anger at his unknown father was so strong, he would have killed the man. How ironic that he found himself saving that very man’s life.”

“He’d never intentionally hurt someone.”

“No,” Daniel agreed quietly. “Never intentionally.” He turned back toward her, idly swirling the contents of his drink, feigning casual. “I don’t see what it is you want from me, Linda.”

“Not me. Your beloved Harry. He wants his father.”

Daniel had raised his glass to drink and now nearly choked on it in a fit of coughing. “His father?” he finally managed once he recovered. “I can’t imagine why he’d turn to me for that.”

“If the Earl is truly his father, then to claim his new identity he needs to document his current one. Unfortunately, he’s lost his identity. Scotland Yard confiscated his Humphrey Bogart passports. He’s trapped here. He can’t prove who he is and he can’t return home.”

“You’ve made an assumption about where his home is,” Daniel said, eyeing her over the glass as he drank.

“We both know that L.A. has been his choice for a long while. He’s always been free to travel wherever and whenever he wishes.” Laura felt a little stab of vindication as she saw her own point hit home.

“You make a compelling case.” Now he stepped away from her, conceding the argument. “What is it you want from me?”

“A passport for him. A United States passport in the name of Remington Steele.”

“You mean, a forgery?” An elegant eyebrow rose. “Illegal?”

“Spare me the fake humility. You’ve got at least four of your own.”

“I was only thinking of you. Straight-and-narrow Linda. I wouldn’t want to compromise your morals.”

“I need your help, much as it pains me to admit this. You know the right people to contact.”

“Why not go to the embassy?”

“We both know why not. They’d find out he doesn’t legally exist.”

“You make it sound like it’s my fault.”

Laura groaned and threw up her hands. “About the missing passports? No, of course not. But given how he risked his neck for you just now, isn’t this the least you can do in return?”

“Well, when you spell it out so nicely like that, how can I possibly refuse?”

She studied him for a long moment, finally deciding that Chalmers was on the up-and-up. For once. “Good,” she said and retrieved a slip of paper from her small handbag. “Here’s the details.”

As he read it, the eyebrow rose even further. He looked up at her and in his expression she saw real surprise.

“I’m only guessing at the year,” Laura explained. “It’s the same as his other passports. The date is when he first walked into the agency.” She gave him a defiant look. “Seems as good a birth date as any for Remington Steele.”

 His next words surprised the hell out of her, although he addressed them not to her, but to a portrait of a starchy eighteen century woman across the room. She thought he was assessing the emerald pendant that was suspended above her generous cleavage until he said, musingly, “I first met Harry in early 1966. He was trying to pick my pocket. Couldn’t have been more than fourteen.”

Laura tried to imagine that, her Mr. Steele as a young lad. Painfully thin, probably. Large expressive eyes and a lock of black hair that tumbled over a dirty forehead. It brought an unbidden smile.

“That seems appropriate. Took a shine to a kindred spirit, did you?”

“More than you can know.” He abruptly clapped his hands together and rubbed them briskly. The brief truce was over. “Give me two days. There should be something ready by then.”

Laura placed a hand on his sleeve. “Thank you,” she said warmly. “For the passport. And…for finding him all those years ago. You raised a very good man.”

“Sentimental pish-tosh,” he said gruffly and turned away. But Laura thought she spotted a brief shine in those brown eyes.

[to be continued...]


	17. Part 2 – Still Steele

_**The estate of the Earl of Claridge...  
** _

_She reached up and straightened the lay of his tie, even though it was knotted to perfection. Her small gesture betrayed that she was as nervous as he, and the realization gave him the courage he needed. She was on his side. They were together again._

_The Earl greeted him with a warm handshake, and Remington was startled to find that the affection in his hazel eyes was genuine. “There are a great many things I regret. But none more severely than losing you.” It was a fantasy come true. The imaginary father who actually wanted him. Remington saw himself reflected in the older man, the shared height and chiseled features, the dark hair flecked with silver. A version of himself in thirty years. “Firm jaw. Blue eyes…”_

_And then he saw it. The flicker of hesitation. And Remington knew it was a fantasy after all._

_The Earl looked away and failed to mask his disappointment. “My son had hazel eyes. Just like his mother.” In the Earl’s gaze was a grief as great as any father’s._

_Remington felt an answering jolt deep in his own chest, that old, familiar pain of having his heart disappointed again. During the past months' journey, he hadn't sought wealth, and certainly not a title. He only sought himself, and the man he might become. In such a simple thing as eye color, he lost what he longed for most in the world._

_His name._

**London – Regent’s Park**

He was silent on the cab ride from the Earl’s London estate and back to their hotel. Laura sat quietly beside him, and at some point he was aware that she held his hand in hers. Neither spoke. There was really nothing to say. They both knew a father wouldn’t mistake the color of his son’s eyes, even when seen only once. As London’s crowded streets slid past their view, he found himself thinking about fathers and how nice it had felt to have the promise of one. He thought about how fate once again enticed him with promises that wouldn’t be fulfilled, as happened time and again throughout his life. And he thought about how his recent weeks of effort had come to naught and that, after all her years of asking, he had no name or identity to offer this amazing woman who sat beside him. She flew thousands of miles to find him, found solutions where he’d only seen barriers, and believed in him when everyone else doubted. Back at the bedsit, she said that she didn’t care what his name was. Now, they both knew he would never have one, and he didn’t know if her words spoken in anger were also heart-felt. There would be no name, and no solution to what she called ‘the one damned thing that stands between us’.

The black cab rolled smoothly into the Hampton’s covered entrance just off the Tottingham Court Road. He paid the driver, and the burgundy-liveried doormen opened the cab doors so they could disembark. Laura moved toward the hotel entrance as the cab pulled away, then she paused and turned around to find him still standing on the pavement, a gap separating them where the cab once stood, and he saw her puzzlement. “Ah, you go ahead, Laura. I think I’ll walk for a while.” He held his breath and hoped.

“Would you like some company?”

A corner of his mouth lifted. _Maybe we’re not finished yet?_ “That would be welcome.”

He led her a few streets over to the enormous landscaped park that rested in the heart of London. “Regent’s,” he explained and they continued to follow asphalt and gravel paths past green lawns and flower beds in late summer bloom. Young children dashed and shrieked across the grass, and lovers and young couples sprawled across the lawns and benches in the precious warmth of the September sun. Neither of them spoke.

All he could think about was Cannes. If it hadn’t been for Felicia and Daniel, there might have been hope. But now, it was like the business with Henri and the dagger all over again.

He knew what he wanted. But he hadn’t the faintest idea how to get there. He was operating on Luck, and that lady had proved herself a fickle companion time and again.

It was Laura who finally tested the waters. “Care to share your thoughts? I’m a pretty good listener.”

“I’ve reason to know it. Funnily enough, all I can think about is Cannes.”

She glanced up at him, and he saw her frown. “Really? All I can think about is the Earl. I’m sorry you lost that possibility. I do understand what having a father means to you.”

He shrugged, pretending not to care. “I make it a point not to mourn possibilities that aren’t…possible.”

As usual, she caught his meaning instantly. “Versus possibilities that are?”

Since she appeared to be listening, he took a chance and forged ahead. “After Cannes…and Acapulco…Malta…and Anna…Lord, what a litany…I promised myself that the next time my past came charging at us, I’d make certain you were involved. I broke that promise again yesterday. I’m sorry for that.”

Then Laura shocked the hell out of him by saying, “Apology accepted. But unnecessary. Armstrong and his group weren’t the type to let you send me a postcard.”

He let out his breath as the weight of anxiety slipped from his shoulders. They weren’t irreparable. He reached out to take her hand and was inexpressibly relieved to discover that she let him take it. That she squeezed his in return.

She said, “My turn for a question.”

“Anything,” he promised. And meant it.

“Why now?”

“What?” He blinked, not understanding.

“Why did you need to learn your real name now? I mean, for years you’ve been fine with Harry or Michael O’Leary or Richard Blaine or whomever. So, why now?”

 _Why now?_ The question echoed in his head. _Is she ready for my answer? The real one?_ He chuckled softly. “I knew it was risky having a relationship with a private detective. You’re always so very good, Laura, at finding the heart of the matter.”

“And have I? Found the heart?”

 _Oh, you have found it_ , he wanted to say. _You found it and it’s yours. It’s been yours for a very long time._ But that answer was still too dangerous; it risked too much and they were still too tenuous. Instead, he said, “I think you’ve guessed that these past three years are the longest I’ve ever stayed in one place. They’re the longest I’ve ever kept an identity. In that time, I’ve come to appreciate that I like how it feels to awaken each morning and know who I am.”

She gave him a sidelong look, skeptical. “A sense of permanence? Coming from you, that’s a pretty big admission.”

“Don’t I know it,” he admitted wryly.

“But it’s more than that, isn’t it? Back at the flop house, when you were injured, you said that you needed a new name, if you had to give Remington Steele’s back to me.”

He groaned. “Laura, do we need to get into that here? Now?”

“We do if we’re going to move forward.”

 _But which direction is forward? And are we even headed in the same direction?_ He pulled a face. “I assume you mean that in the figurative sense. I’ve lost my passports, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“I haven’t forgotten. What did you mean?”

“You’re a damned, stubborn woman.”

“Flattery gets you nowhere.”

He unconsciously tugged at his earlobe. Looked away to watch the shouting children as they played across the manicured green lawns. They were lucky, he thought, not knowing what life held for each of them. How brutal it would be. Alongside him, Laura matched his thoughtful pace and the gravel path crunched softly beneath their feet.

Finally, he said, carefully, “There’s a thing called unintended consequences. When I arrived in L.A. to steal the Royal Lavulite, I expected to drop in and out. I didn’t expect to don the mantle of Remington Steele. Didn’t think I’d be wearing it four years later. Didn’t expect to find an identity that I truly enjoyed.” He glanced at her to gauge her response. “I didn’t expect to discover someone I would come to care deeply about.”

“Go on,” was all she said.

“I also didn’t expect to discover that I like a sense of permanence. I have a name to answer to every day. People who respect it.” He shrugged. “Well, when they aren’t shooting at me or coshing my noggin over it. It’s a novel sensation, having people respect you because they admire who you are and what you represent.”

She met his gaze again, and the empathy he read in her face made his heart skip. “It is novel for you, isn’t it? I wish I could make it better for you. Change it, somehow.”

He paused, then, and turned to face her, nesting her hands within his. “You make it better every day, Laura. You can’t help it. It’s like breathing for you.” He freed a hand and reached upward to gently cup her cheek and trace a thumb along the line of her face. “Because of you, I discovered I like having that level of commitment. To myself. The agency. To you.”

Her own hand came up to rest against his. “I meant what I said the other day. I don’t care what your name is. I won’t ask for the impossible.”

He chuckled, but he couldn’t quite keep the bitterness from it. “I very much hope so, because I strongly suspect there’s not a snowball’s chance of learning it. All I learned from the exercise is I’m the bastard son of a thief.” He lifted an eyebrow in self-mockery. “Which, in retrospect, oughtn’t be surprising.”

“So what happens now?”

“That’s up to you. Remington Steele isn’t my name, it’s yours.”

She searched his face. He hadn’t a blessed idea for what. Then she said, “We meet the inspector in an hour. Do you trust me enough to see this through?”

“I do,” he said. And when he heard the echo of his words, his heart skipped a beat. _I do, Laura Holt. From this day forward. For as long as you’ll have me._

 

_To be continued..._


	18. Part 2 – Still Steele

**London – New Scotland Yard**

They finally kept their appointment with Chief Inspector Lombard. Steele sported his sartorial best, not a wrinkle in sight, and he was pleased to see that Laura looked equally professional in a skirt ensemble that showed a delectable flash of long leg that would keep the inspector preoccupied. Assuming the man had a beating heart. He wasn’t convinced on that point yet.

“Mr. Steele,” the silver-haired Scotland Yard man said cordially as they shook hands in his offices at New Scotland Yard. “I trust you’re not the worse for wear after your adventures?”

Steele flapped a dismissive hand in a classic version of ‘never broke a sweat’. “All safe and sound. I trust the Earl and his new lady are well?”

“Yes. I’m given to understand they finally departed for their honeymoon.” Lombard gestured for them to be seated and took his own behind a cluttered desk. Steele knew, however, not to mistake that for a cluttered mind. “Between the attempt on his life and his brother-in-law’s arrest, not the most auspicious start for their nuptials.”

“Well, nothing like a little crisis to reinforce the bonds of devotion and fidelity, eh?”

In his ear Laura murmured, “Laying it on a little thick, Mr. Steele?”

 _Miss Holt can be so unhelpful at times._ Having felt he’d smoothed the way and lubricated that manly bond between officials of law enforcement – meaning himself and Lombard – he now tackled the stickier subject. “I gather that your case against Messiers Armstrong, Hawkins and colleagues is proceeding well?”

“Yes, thank you. You and Mr. Chalmers clarified the situation nicely and Armstrong hardly refuted the charges. We searched the farmhouse, as you suggested, and found both the body in its pond and the weapon that killed him. Armstrong and friends will have a long stay at Her Majesty’s expense. The Earl was most grateful to you for saving his and his bride’s lives.”

“The least we could do under the circumstances,” Steele politely agreed.

“Oddly, we found no trace of the woman. Miss Simone. Seems to have vanished like a cat.”

“She’s very beautiful,” he said. “A woman like her shouldn’t be difficult to locate.” He mentally crossed his fingers at the same time that Miss Holt’s heeled shoe connected with his ankle. Fortunately, he was prepared and thought he managed not to flinch.

“Still,” said Lombard with a small sigh and a shuffle of papers across his desk, “it’s early days and doubtless her trail will emerge. But that’s not why I asked you here today.”

“Isn’t it?” He composed his features into dull blandness. Nothing could be duller. Dull, dull subject.

“I’m afraid it’s rather a question of these.” And like a magician Lombard conjured a set of five passports in his hand.

It was only through sheer self-restraint that Steele didn’t rise and snatch them back. Instead, he fell back into silence. _Let’s see how the old boy wants to play this._

Lombard fanned the worn, familiar documents as if a card deck. “As I informed Miss Holt, this is hardly something I can look away from. They’re obviously forgeries, albeit very good ones. Very good, indeed. Curiously,” and here he flipped through their front pages, “not a single one in the name of Remington Steele.”

“There’s a simple explanation for that,” Laura jumped in quickly. “Due to the sensitive nature of his work, Mr. Steele sometimes needs to appear incognito. It wouldn’t do to have his identity revealed during a delicate investigation. The agency prepared these obvious facsimiles so his true identity would remain protected. For example, against those murderous miners.”

His heart jolted unexpectedly. _Oh, Laura. Trust you to fall on your sword for me._

Lombard said carefully, “I might believe that, had the documents not been so well used. Mr. Steele, does a passport exist under that name?”

And he let the statement hang there, echoing in the silence.

Despite his self-control, Steele felt his pulse begin to race. He had mentally canvassed the room when he first strolled in. Now he quickly reviewed his options, all the while keeping his expression carefully schooled. _One door, through an outer office into corridors. Out Lombard’s window into who knows where?_

_Oh, damn, Laura. I’m sorry._

“Complicating the matter,” Lombard now continued, “some of the names in these passports were implicated in past activities. Theft of the Marchessa Collection. The Five Nudes of Cairo. Nothing concrete, mind. But potentially embarrassing questions could be raised.”

He was aware that the telltale muscle in his cheek had begun to twitch. _Dammit, I’m sorry, Laura. You should never have come looking for me. Your agency means everything. I should have kept running, instead of trying to lure you back to me._

“There’s a perfectly logical explanation—” Laura reiterated, but Lombard raised a silencing hand.

“And then this crossed my desk.” ‘This’, he held in his hand, was a letter on heavy blue paper and a foolscap hand. “The Earl of Claridge wrote with a most interesting tale. Apparently there was good reason to believe that you, Mr. Steele, were his illegitimate son. You were in possession of a watch that was given to the mother. The Earl confirms this is why you were searching for him. Not because you suspected him of murder.”

 _What was this about?_ He decided to ride with it. “To S.J. from K.L. Kevin Landers. Alas, my eyes were the wrong color.”

“The Earl noted that in his letter. He further conveyed that he greatly wished that it had been otherwise. He said you were an honorable man and that he’s considerably in your debt.”

“Mr. Steele has resided in L.A. for nearly four years,” said Laura quickly. “He’s solved a number of important cases.” _Riding to my defense once again. Oh, Laura, Laura._ His heart began to ache for her. _Will this never end? I can’t keep dragging you into these messes._

Lombard continued, “Indeed, Remington Steele has quite the international reputation. Retrieving the Hapsburg Dagger. The Maltese Cross affair. Breaking up an international diamond smuggling ring. Unmasking the export of technical secrets for the CIA.” He set down the letter and Steele’s breathing stopped. _Here it comes._

“I can’t look away. However, I also can’t dispute your reputation. Mr. Steele, your passports must remain with me. I suggest that you turn your considerable investigative talents to identify your real birth name and date and secure a legitimate passport.” Now his features softened, just a little, and he met Steele’s astonished gaze. “You have my sympathies, for what it’s worth. I can’t imagine what it must be like. I wish you success.” And now he rose and offered his hand. “Mr. Steele. Miss Holt.”

“Thank you,” said Steele and put his heartfelt sincerity into it.

Lombard tipped his elegant head. “Thank the Earl. He’s a remarkably persuasive man.”

Steele took Laura’s arm and steered her out the door, moving naturally but rapidly. “Quick,” he hissed, “before Lombard changes his mind.”

But his nerves still jangled all the way down through the long office corridors and his pulse didn’t slow until they were well and away from the environs of New Scotland Yard and back into what he thought of as the real world. They were paused at a busy street corner, waiting for the crossing light to change, and he noticed Laura staring at him, quizzically. “Cold?” she asked.

“Why?”

“You’re shivering.”

“The full power of the Yard has that effect on me,” he quipped, betraying his nerves.

“Then come here and let me warm you.” And she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him into a kiss that definitely warmed his blood. And if they hadn’t been standing on a busy London pavement, crowded with pedestrians pushing past, he would have warmed hers as well. Instead, he pulled away with no little reluctance, just far back enough so he could look at her.

“Thank you.”

The little frown appeared. “For what?”

“For saving my sorry hide once again.”

“All part of the efficient services of Remington Steele Investigations.”

“No. I mean it, Laura. I’ve really bolloxed it this time. I arrived in London to learn my real name and discover I’m not the son of an Earl. And in the process I manage to lose every identity I had.” He shook his head. “Ironic doesn’t begin to cover it.”

“Perhaps. But it’s all from trying to do the right thing.”

He added, with justifiable suspicion and a raised eyebrow, “You’re remarkably understanding about all this. I’m still waiting for my dressing down.”

“One crisis at a time, Mr. Steele,” she said, but the fact that she smiled as she said it made him feel that little bit better. The light finally changed, and she tugged at his arm, still entwined with her own. “Come on. Let’s get out of here before the Chief Inspector has second thoughts.”

 

_To be continued..._

 


	19. Part 2 – Still Steele

**London – The Hampton Hotel**

His mental clock had been ticking down and it was now just two hours until Laura and Mildred had to leave for their flight out of Heathrow. Without him. Yesterday he visited an old acquaintance, the best forger in London who went by the name of Sherlock, but Sherlock had told him the quality passport necessary to fool U.S. immigration would take a week. Laura had told him to pack, but it was pointless. Still, her faith was touching. She really was an optimist. He had decided to play his unfixable predicament with humor. It was the only thing that kept him from flinging himself out Laura’s hotel room window and onto the pavement five floors below. No father, no identity, no more LA life with Laura chasing murderers and each other.

Still, it never hurt to sound out his Plan B. “I hope you liked London, Laura?”

A corner of her mouth lifted. “Well, I haven’t exactly hit the usual tourist attractions. So it’s a bit difficult to judge.”

“It seems if we’re going to continue our relationship, it’ll have to be here.”

She made a show of considering that. “It’s awfully glum here compared with L.A. On the other hand, you have a Queen and a lady Prime Minister, so perhaps they’ll take a female private eye more seriously than back home?” She grinned. “Might not even need a Remington Steele.”

“Laura,” he drawled warningly.

He looked at her, deciding whether he should grab her and pull her back onto the bed and finally show her how much she meant to him. Laura glanced at her watch for the eleventeenth time, and just as he was about to reach for her, there was a brief knock at the door, followed by Mildred. _Of course._ She wore a satisfied expression and she carried a gentleman’s shirt box elegantly tied with red ribbons and bows. She’d been shopping for someone back home, apparently. “Miss Holt. Mister…Chie…Bo…” She stumbled to a stop, and her cherubic features were pink with embarrassment.

He raised a knowing eyebrow. “I see you haven’t quite forgiven my deception yet.”

She fixed him with her IRS look, the one from which the puppy-dog had been ruthlessly smothered. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know how I feel. It’s gonna take some time to work through all this.”

He felt a little sad at that. He really did love Mildred. “Regrettable, but understandable.”

“Anyway, here ya go.” And she handed him the wrapped shirt box.

He frowned, but accepted the package. “What’s this?”

Laura folded her arms and stepped back a little, but he couldn’t miss a twinkle in those brown eyes. “It’s sort of a consolation present. For not being the son of an Earl.”

He recognized the box, of course. It was from one of the City’s better shirt makers. “Just what I need to help me through the trauma. A shirt.” He was all too aware of his women’s expectant gazes as he slipped off the ribbon and removed the lid. Inside were layers of folded tissue paper. But no shirt. _Terrific. A gag gift._

“Socks?...A handkerchief?” He was never going to live down his taste for elegance, was he? As he continued to probe the tissue layers, his sensitive fingers contacted a familiar texture. A small booklet with a cover made from richly textured cardstock. He pulled it out, not quite believing what it might be.

But it was.

 “A passport?” Not one from the United Kingdom, but a version with a dark navy binding and the Great Seal of the United States embossed in gold on its front cover. His fingers actually trembled as he opened it…

…And stared in astonishment at its first pages. His photo. A birth date. His Los Angeles address. His signature. Okay, Laura’s version of his, he amended. In the name of… “Remington Steele?”

He looked up then, aware of the tears that unexpectedly pricked his eyes. Mildred’s shone suspiciously as well. “I’m touched,” he said needlessly.

“I guess you’ve earned it,” Mildred said, only a little reluctantly.

Laura looked like Nero after that time her little cat had consumed Steele’s crème anglaise dessert that he’d foolishly left on Laura’s kitchen counter. She was clearly delighted that she finally pulled one over him. “Many happy returns, Mr. Steele.”

He leaned forward to pull them into an embrace before he dissolved into a blubbering fool. And they both hugged him back.

“I don’t know what to say. Thank you.” He ran a finger over the documentation page, still not quite believing. 1952. They got the year right. And the date? He did a little calculation and then brushed a quick knuckle beneath his nose, hoping they didn’t notice that he was a little choked up. He thought it was the date he’d first appeared as Ben Pearson. The day he met Laura. The day his life changed.

He collected himself before he got too maudlin. “We still have a few hours before our flight. May I treat my ladies to a generous lunch?”

Mildred glanced from one to the other. “You kids go ahead. I’ve got some shopping to do. Never seemed to have the chance till now.”

She collected her handbag and then crossed the room to drop a light kiss on Steele’s cheek. “Thanks, Boss. Glad you like the present.”

“Thank you, Mildred,” he replied. “So I’m back to boss again?”

“Don’t count on it yet,” she warned but her grin matched his own. “See you in the lobby in two hours,” she said and left.

Steele carefully tucked his hard-won gift into the inner breast pocket of his jacket. Laura, meanwhile, perched herself on the bed beside him.

“Laura? How did you…?”

“The passport? Daniel, of course. I shamed him into it.”

“Really? Wish I’d been there to witness it.” He considered the scenario. “Well, perhaps not.”

She smiled. “Don’t worry. He can still walk.”

 _Me and Laura. Together. On a bed. The perfect way to spend the next two hours._ But instead of taking her in his arms, or rising to escort her to an expensive lunch at Rules, he instead leaned back against the headboard and studied her. The rich fall of chestnut hair. The sculptured line of her cheek and that delightfully stubborn chin. The dusting of freckles across her pert nose and how they sprinkled down to disappear beneath her blouse collar. Her incredible strength. _When was it that I fell in love with you? How could I possibly have thought I could leave you?_

A little furrow appeared between her brows in response to his scrutiny. “What?”

_I want to take you in my arms. Kiss you like you’ve never been kissed before. Slowly remove your clothing, item by item, and taste every inch of your skin. Make you burn for me the way I burn for you._

_But I can’t. Because while I know what’s in your heart, I don’t believe you do. And I don’t know yet how to make you see it._

He wanted to say and do all those things. But instead, he asked with surprising calm, “So? What happens next?”

She blinked, clearly not expecting that question. “What do you mean, what happens next? We go back to L.A. Our flight leaves at six.”

 _It’s time. I have to know how you feel about us._ He shook his head and pushed forward. “That’s not what I meant. You know what I’m asking.”

Brown eyes widened and he recognized the old panic. “Were you serious? You want to stay here? In London?” _Of course. Felicia fed those fears again, didn’t she?_

“That’s not it. Why did you track me down, Laura? I have to know.”

“What? Why wouldn’t I track you down? You’re my partner! The agency needs you!”

Now he leaned forward to clasp her arm. “I’m not talking about the agency,” he said, intent. “I’m talking about you. What does Laura Holt want?” He held her gaze and refused to let her look away.

She prevaricated, just as he knew she would. “I could ask you the same question. You didn’t exactly hide your route when you left LA. You left big footprints through Australia, Rome, and Dublin. You hoped I’d find you.”

 _Good._ “And what if I did?”

“Then why leave in the first place? And don’t give me that fol-de-dal about wanting to find your real name to replace Remington Steele.”

He released her and now rose to pace the confines of her room. Passport or no, he had to have this out with her. “All right. You want the truth, Laura? I got tired of being strung along. Of you blowing hot and cold whenever we grow too close for your comfort zone. I can’t take it anymore, Laura. I’m tired of being kicked to the curb every time you start feeling penned in or anxious. Because next time, there won’t be a next time. You’re not the only person with feelings in this relationship!”

“Then try acting like it!”

“I do, Laura! And every time I do, you reach a point where you panic and run away!  That business with Westfield was just the latest in your series of dancing away in terror whenever we grow too close.”

“There was nothing between me and Westfield!”

“Wasn’t there? I’m a man, Laura. I have eyes. Especially when it involves you. More’s the pity.”

“This isn’t exactly one-sided, Mr. Steele. What about you and Felicia? You disappeared again only to turn up in her bedroom!”

“I was never in her bedro—” _Okay, I was in her bedroom_. _But not like Laura means_. He ran his hands through his hair, frustrated. “There’s nothing between me and Felicia. Hasn’t been for years. The fantasy’s all on her side.”

“So just a mere coincidence that I found you close and comfortable with her and Daniel?”

“Laura, whatever Felicia said to you was a lie. I only went to her Kensington flat because I was desperate for a kip.”

 “Keep talking. I’m listening,” although her folded arms suggested exactly the opposite.

“She did make a pass at me. I won’t deny it. But I told her we were finished, she and I.” He threw up his hands, exasperated. “You wanted honesty? There! Congratulations.”

“Since we seem to be telling the truth, what made you turn her down?”

“She wasn’t you.”

His admission startled her so much that he heard her sudden intake of breath. He’d been more honest with her in five minutes than either of them had been all through this past, horrible year. _Please, Laura. Return the favor._ She took a deep breath. She said slowly, as if finding her way to the words, “When I said what I did? Back in L.A.? I never meant that you as Remington Steele had ended.”

“He ended for me when you put me out of your life.” He couldn’t keep the pain from his voice, and she looked quickly at him. Took an instinctive step toward him. “I can’t do that again, Laura. I can’t be put aside whenever you panic about us getting too close. I can’t do this emotional yo-yo. Either we move forward – together – or we don’t.”

“You mean, you leave.”

He shook his head in frustration. “I don’t know how to make this clearer. Surely being at your side, becoming your Remington Steele, seeing only you, means I’m not going to leave. I want this life. I actively chose it. It’s not a con. Or a game.” His heart lurched. “I want you. Us.”

She stepped away from him, then. Went to stand before the window and the grey urban view beyond, her arms again wrapped around her. He suspected she wasn’t seeing the view. Moments dragged and he stood on the knife edge. _Here it comes. Is it the blade into the heart?_

Finally, she spoke. Her slim back was rigid and her words were addressed to something or someone outside the window. “All right, then. Since you voted for honesty. I came looking for you, because I wanted you, too.”

He couldn’t keep the bleakness away. “Do you? Because there are days when I don’t know what you want anymore. Truth is, I don’t believe you know, either.”

She threw up her hands. “Only you would find flying five thousand miles to be ambiguous!”

“Maybe because I’m not the one who makes the decisions in this relationship!”

“Well, then, I’m making one now,” she said and lifted her chin and met his gaze. “I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?!” He muttered a curse under his breath. _It’s not an apology that I want, Laura._

Then she continued, “You’re right. My old fears came roaring back. Seeing you leave. Losing my independence. What if the agency really was the only glue holding us together?” She paused and he thought she was finished. But then she spoke again, and he heard the quaver in her voice. “Once I thought about it, that evening, I realized what I really wanted was you. And I came back to find you’d left.” She made a quick gesture, as if to brush her face. _Tears?_

“Laura?”

Now she turned fully toward him. Ran hands through her hair. “You waltzed into my life and stole Remington Steele’s identity. Turns out you were pretty good as him. You wear the mantle perfectly.” One corner of her mouth lifted. “Well, almost perfectly. When I created him, I imagined a man who was generous, kind, honest. Caring. Someone I’d want to work with. I think it’s fair to say you’ve become that man. And I can’t bear not having him around.”

Unexpected emotion swept through him and for a moment she blurred before him. When he spoke, he tried to push the conversation onto safer ground. Her words were far more than he had dared to expect. “Honest? Perfect? Remember who you’re talking about here,” he joked.

“Mostly. What I’m trying to say is, I want you to stay.”

“As Remington Steele.”

“Yes.”

“And what about outside the office?”

“I need you to stay as well. I want us to move forward. Together.” A corner of her mouth lifted. “How crazy is that?”

“About as crazy as this,” he said softly. He reached forward, tentative, and Laura drew to him like a moth to a flame. His hands gently cupped her face. Laura reached up to take him as well. Tasted her lips, breathed her scent. Drew her in, tasting deeply and letting her drink as well. It was as if he’d only kissed her yesterday instead of weeks ago. Had kissed her forever. Their kiss deepened and he poured into it the longing that he’d felt those last months while they were apart. She answered back to reclaim what she missed as well.

When she finally drew back, they were both shuddering from their rekindled fire. _Yes. That feeling’s still here._ He rested his forehead against hers and found his balance again as the fire banked. He said, “I don’t know what it is we have. Maybe it’s love, of a sort. But I’d like the opportunity to find out.”

“Were you really going away for good?”Yes. No. I don’t know.” He sighed in frustration. “I had this crazy idea that, if I could learn what my real name was, I could present myself on a platter and you might finally believe in me. Only it turns out, I have no name to give you. How’s that for a bugger’s cock-up?”

She gave him a wry smile. “And I had this crazy idea that, if I learned your real name, it might resolve all my fears and doubts. Instead, I discovered that your name doesn’t matter. You’re you. I don’t care if you’re an Earl’s son or the son of a thief. Baptized or illegitimate.” She rested a hand against his face. “And, it doesn’t mean we’re finished. Instead, I find myself liking you the better for it.”

He shook his head against her touch. “That’s irony for you.”

“Come on, Mr. Steele. Let’s find some lunch and go home before someone tries to rope us into another case.”

 

[to be continued...]

 


	20. Epilogue

**Los Angeles International Airport**

“Welcome home, Mr. Steele,” said the uniformed officer at LA’s passport control and handed the precious document back to him. Steele swiftly tucked it into his jacket breast pocket before the man had second thoughts. Not that any passport Laura provided would be substandard.

The man had continued, “Things have been quiet here in L.A. without you.”

“Have they indeed?” murmured Steele. He glanced across the busy room, crowded with international arrivals, and to the nearby booth where Laura stood, having her own passport checked before reentering the U.S. Uncannily, she looked up just then. Shared with him a warm smile that sent his nerves tingling and his pulse racing.

“Quiet, eh? Well, then. We’ll just have to see what we can do to fix that.”

 

**Los Angeles**

The trio from Remington Steele Investigations flew home together – first class, of course – from London to L.A. and it wasn’t until their plane crossed Ontario’s air space and Mildred disappeared into the loo that Steele was finally able to voice the question that had troubled him ever since reality set in. He was going home. To L.A. And Laura plus L.A. equaled Home. He didn’t need to be a math major to figure that out.

“Laura?”

“Mmm?” She favored him with a warm smile that made her look elfin and only heightened his stifled desire.           

“I’ve been meaning to ask. Ah, where, exactly, do I stay once we arrive in L.A.?” He rubbed reflexively at an earlobe. “Only, er, all my things are in storage.”

“Ahh,” she said wisely and there was a welcome note of satisfaction in her tone that sounded rather comforting. Comforting enough that he dared to follow up.

“I suppose you wouldn’t consider hosting me for a few nights, eh? Just until I find temporary digs. I’m happy to provide the cooking.”

A manicured eyebrow arched. “Mr. Steele, are you suggesting that you sleep on my sofa?”

“Well, that’s the general suggestion,” he agreed. “Purely platonic.” He knew that wasn’t his suggestion and she would know it, too. To dare otherwise would be asking for the moon, and he was already thrilled that Laura was back in his life. Things were still fragile between them. But…as Daniel often said, nothing ventured…

“Your sofa’s divine, Laura. Unless…you have something else in mind?”

“Actually, I do,” she said and his heart skipped a few beats. She took his hand in her own and he closed around hers warmly. She continued, “I shouldn’t tell you this…”

“Yes?”

“…The truth is, I couldn’t let your apartment go.”

He twisted in his leather seat to stare at her, stunned. He hadn’t quite believed Monroe. “Truly?”

A delightful flush touched her cheeks. “Truly. I couldn’t let it go. It would mean you weren’t coming back. And I couldn’t bear the thought of that.”

He raised her hand and pressed his lips against her warm skin. “Truth is,” he said quietly as he held her gaze, “I couldn’t bear it, either.”

Mildred came back then. Naturally. By silent agreement they dropped further discussion of the topic and the conversation slid elsewhere.

Back in L.A., they gathered their luggage and headed for the row of cabs; it was too late at night to call Fred. They saw Mildred safely into her taxi and then he glanced at Laura. Hoping. She said, “I have your apartment key at my loft,” and then grinned, teasing him. “Unless you’d rather stick with tradition and pick the lock?”

“No, I’ll do it Remington Steele style, thanks.” But he was smiling, too. So they shared a cab to Laura’s loft – “Ladies first,” he’d opined, believing her excuse of his key but hoping for an opportunity to change her mind. She held his hand and their shoulders touched all during the ride in the taxi’s darkened interior and again as he stood beside her, surrounded by her luggage, as they rode her building’s freight elevator to her third floor loft. At the loft, she unlocked the padlock and rolled the metal door back, and he brought the luggage inside while she disappeared up the steps to her sleeping platform. His surreptitious glance revealed she had kept the key in her jewelry box – keys, he realized as she handed them back, as the Auburn keys were attached as well, and his heart lurched as he understood that she’d kept his car, too.

“Welcome back, Mr. Steele,” she said, and he thought he had never heard her so calm and secure before. Confident. Wanting him back and happy he was here.

“Thank you,” he said as he took them from her, and as he did, her hand closed around his larger one, freezing the action. She said, softly, completely understanding him, “I want to. Your being gone made me realize how much I need you in my life. How I want far more than what we’ve had. I look forward to it more than anything.”

“So do I,” he admitted and swept her into his arms and into a kiss that promised what was to come and how it would be. Mindful of the taxi driver and his running meter, he released her only reluctantly. “See you tomorrow,” he promised, and then floated back downstairs to the patiently waiting taxi.

It was well past two a.m. when he finally rode the Rossmore’s elevator to the fifth floor and walked up the hall. The blue-haired Mrs. Kaminski was asleep but he knew tomorrow she’d be ecstatic at his return. He paused at the apartment’s door and, impulsively, brushed his fingertips lightly against the silver-plated lettering. 5A. It felt all at once familiar and foreign. Nothing had changed that he could see, yet his memories of the place were old and unraveled around the edges.

He drew a long breath, fitted the key, and unlocked the door to step inside.

And there was his furniture. The comfortable grey sofa where he and Laura had spent so many evenings, sipping wine, watching an old movie, enjoying each other’s company. The gas fireplace and the source of many fantasies. His vintage movie posters. The familiar smells. The familiarity was unexpectedly comforting, and for a moment his eyes stung as he was overwhelmed with emotion.

There was time enough for that tomorrow. Tomorrow, an entire future was lined up and waiting for them.

For now, he slipped easily into the old routine. Dropped his keys into the glass bowl that rested on the credenza by the door. Carried his suitcase to the bedroom and opened it atop the bed, only to remember there were no hangers for his clothes. He’d call Monroe tomorrow and retrieve his wardrobe from storage, if the man hadn’t sold it off. Wandered into the kitchen and peeked at the refrigerator and cupboards; made a mental shopping list for tomorrow. Turned off the lights. Checked the dead bolts. Grabbed a quick shower as travel always left him feeling rumpled.

He dried off – Laura had thoughtfully provided towels – and returned to his bedroom. He flipped the bedspread down and prepared to slide between the sheets, grateful to return to the familiar comfort of his bed.

And then he saw it, just visible in the yellow pool of light cast from the bedside lamp.

A dark strand of hair rested across one of the pale grey pillowcases. A long hair. Not so much dark as chestnut, really. The color of sunshine. The color of hope.

A smile touched his lips as he gently removed the hair strand and, after a moment’s thought, he carefully replaced it upon the pillow. Then took himself to bed and rested his head atop it. He could just detect her faint scent amidst the linens, the reminder of sunshine and roses and a surprising faith in him.

He drifted to sleep and dreamt of hope and love and tomorrow.

A mile and a half way, Laura Holt pulled on her nightgown, checked the locks, and turned off the lights. She would pick up Nero tomorrow from the sitter’s. She slipped between the cool bedsheets and for the first time in months her single bed no longer felt lonely, thanks to the recent memory of his warm arms wrapped around her once again.

 

THE END

 


End file.
